Laughter and Awkwardness in Late Medieval England
Social Discomfort in the Literature of the Middle Ages
- 208 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Laughter and Awkwardness in Late Medieval England
Social Discomfort in the Literature of the Middle Ages
About this book
'We live, ' according to Adam Kotsko, 'in an awkward age.' While this condition may present some challenges, it may also help us to be more attuned to awkwardness in other ages. This book pairs medieval texts with twenty-first century films or television programmes to explore what the resonance between them can tell us about living together in an awkward age. In this nuanced and engaging study, David Watt focuses especially, but not exclusively, on the 15th century, which seems to intervene awkwardly in the literary trajectory between Chaucer and the Renaissance. This book's hypothesis is that the social discomfort depicted and engendered by writers as diverse as Thomas Hoccleve, Margery Kempe, and Sir Thomas Malory is a feature rather than a flaw. Laughter and Awkwardness in Late Medieval England explains that these authors have a great deal in common with other fifteenth-century authors, who generated embodied experiences of social discomfort in a range of genres by adopting and adapting literary techniques used by their predecessors and successors in slightly different ways. Like the twenty-first century texts with which they are paired, the late-medieval texts that feature in this book use the relationship between laughter and awkwardness to ask what it means to live with each other and how we can learn to live with ourselves.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Halftitle Page
- Title Page
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of abbreviations
- Note on quotations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 When everything goes pear-shaped: Laughter and awkwardness in Augustine’s Confessions
- 2 Elated or gassy? Between affect and emotion in the Luttrell Psalter
- 3 May this be true? The awkwardness of accepting grace in Pearl
- 4 Creating tension: Laughter and anger in Cleanness
- 5 Virtuous even if it displeases: Patience
- 6 The games people play: Laughter and belonging in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
- 7 All shall be well: Laughter and belonging in Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love
- 8 Too much information? Suggestive diction in ‘I have a Gentil Cock’
- 9 Does this stress make me look fat? Awkward questions in Thomas Hoccleve’s La Male Regle
- 10 You’re so vain, you probably think this Psalm is about you: Saving face in Thomas Hoccleve’s Series
- 11 Great cause to laugh: Conversation and compassion in The Book of Margery Kempe
- 12 Sing with us, with a merry cheer! The awkwardness of going along with it in Mankind
- 13 Ever froward: Standing up for the audience in the Chester Play of Noah’s Flood
- 14 Disappointing expectations: Laughter, awkwardness and the end of Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur
- Conclusion: An awkward age?
- References
- Index
- Imprint