Socioliterary Practice in Late Medieval England bridges the disciplines of literature and history by examining various kinds of literary language as examples of social practice. Readings of both English and Latin texts from the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries are grounded in close textual study which reveals the social positioning of these works and the kinds of ideological work they can be seen to perform.

• Abbreviations


• Introduction: Socioliterary practice


• 1: Constructing social realities: Wynnere and Wastoure, Hoccleve and Chaucer


• 2: Pearl - or the jeweller's tale


• 3: Unfixing the signs of kingship: Gower's Cronica Tripertita and Richard the Redeless


• 4: The regal image of Richard II and the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women


• 5: 'From pig to man and man to pig': the 1381 uprisings in Chaucer's The Nun's Priest's Tale


• 6: 'Blessed are the horny hands of toil': Wycliffite representations of the third estate


• 7: Coded birds and bees: unscrambling Mum and the Sothsegger and The Boke of Cupide


• Afterword: 'Adieu Sir Churl: Lydgate's The Churl and the Bird


• Works Cited


• Index