Fictions of Advice
eBook - PDF

Fictions of Advice

The Literature and Politics of Counsel in Late Medieval England

  1. 224 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Fictions of Advice

The Literature and Politics of Counsel in Late Medieval England

About this book

Fictions of Advice historicizes the late medieval mirrors (or handbooks) for princes to reveal how the ambiguities and contradictions characteristic of the genre are responses to—as well as attempts to manage—the risks implicit in advising a king.Often thought of as moralizing advice unable to engage political conflicts, the mirrors for princes have been taken for dull and conventionalized testimonies to the medieval taste for platitude. Judith Ferster maintains that advice was at the center of one of the important political debates in the late Middle Ages: how to constrain the king and allow for his subjects' participation. Fictions of Advice rereads the English mirrors for princes to show how their moralizing was often highly topical and even subversive. Although overtly deferential to the rulers they address, the mirrors' authors were surprisingly capable of criticism and opposition.In putting the texts back into their historical contexts, Ferster reveals the vital cultural and political function they fulfilled in their societies.

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Yes, you can access Fictions of Advice by Judith Ferster in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & Medieval & Early Modern Literary Criticism. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Contents
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. 1. Introduction
  4. 2. The Context for Literature: Public Discourse in the Late Middle Ages
  5. 3. The Secretum Secretorum and the Governance of Kings
  6. 4. The Secretum Secretorum in Ireland
  7. 5. Council, Counsel, and the Politics of Advice
  8. 6. Chaucer's Tale of Melibee: Advice to the King and Advice to the King's Advisers
  9. 7. O Political Gower
  10. 8. A Mirror for the Prince of Wales: Hoccleve's Regement of Princes
  11. 9. Machiavelli's Prince
  12. 10. Conclusion
  13. Works Cited
  14. Index