Research Catalog

Last words : the public self and the social author in late medieval England

Title

Last words : the public self and the social author in late medieval England / Sebastian Sobecki.

Author

Sobecki, Sebastian I.

Publication

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2019.
©2019

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schwarzman Building to submit a request in person.	Text	Use in library	JFD 20-2459	Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315

Details

Description

x, 226 pages : illustrations, facsimiles; 21 cm.

Summary

No medieval text was designed to be read hundreds of years later by an audience unfamiliar with its language, situation, and author. By ascribing to these texts intentional anonymity, we romanticise them and misjudge the social character of their authors. Instead, most medieval poems and manuscripts presuppose familiarity with their authorial or scribal maker. 'Last Words: The Public Self and the Social Author in Late Medieval England' attempts to recover this familiarity and understand the literary motivation behind some of most important fifteenth-century texts and authors.0Last Words captures the public selves of such social authors when they attempt to extract themselves from the context of a lived life. Driven by archival research and literary inquiry, this book reveals where John Gower kept the Trentham manuscript in his final years, how John Lydgate wished to be remembered, and why Thomas Hoccleve wrote his best-known work, the Series. It includes documentary breakthroughs and archival discoveries, and introduces a new life record for Hoccleve, identifies the author of a significant political poem, and reveals the handwriting of John Gower and George Ashby.0Through its investments in archival study, book history, and literary criticism, Last Words charts the extent to which medieval English literature was shaped by the social selves of their authors.

Series Statement

Oxford textual perspectives

Uniform Title

Oxford textual perspectives.

Alternative Title

Public self and the social author in late medieval England

Subject

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 195-216) and indexes.

Contents

The indexical self: an introduction -- Ecce patet tensus: the manuscript, in praise of peace, and John Gower's autograph hand -- The series: Thomas Hoccleve;s year of mourning -- Parting shots: Richard Caudray's libelle of englyshe polycyc -- Lydgate's kneeling retraction: the testament as a literary palinode -- The signet self: George Ashbys autograph writing -- Afterward: pragmatic selves.

Call Number

JFD 20-2459

ISBN

9780198790785
0198790783
9780198790778
0198790775

LCCN

2019941578

OCLC

1103986266

Author

Sobecki, Sebastian I., author.

Title

Last words : the public self and the social author in late medieval England / Sebastian Sobecki.

Publisher

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2019.

Copyright Date

Edition

First edition.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Oxford textual perspectives

Oxford textual perspectives.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 195-216) and indexes.

Chronological Term

1100-1500

Research Call Number

JFD 20-2459

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