- ホーム
- > 洋書
- > 英文書
- > Literary Criticism
Full Description
First full-length interdisciplinary study of the effect of these everyday surroundings on literature, culture and the collective consciousness of the late middle ages.
The bed, and the chamber which contained it, was something of a cultural and social phenomenon in late-medieval England. Their introduction into some aristocratic and bourgeois households captured the imagination of late-medievalEnglish society. The bed and chamber stood for much more than simply a place to rest one's head: they were symbols of authority, unparalleled spaces of intimacy, sanctuaries both for the powerless and the powerful. This change inphysical domestic space shaped the ways in which people thought about less tangible concepts such as gender politics, communication, God, sex and emotions. Furthermore, the practical uses of beds and chambers shaped and were shaped by artistic and literary production.
This volume offers the first interdisciplinary study of the cultural meanings of beds and chambers in late-medieval England. It draws on a vast array of literary, pragmatic and visual sources, including romances, saints' lives, lyrics, plays, wills, probate inventories, letters, church and civil court documents, manuscript illumination and physical objects, to shed new light on the ways in which beds and chambersfunctioned as both physical and conceptual spaces.
Contents
Introduction
'Fyrst arysse erly'
'Serve thy God deuly'
'Do thy warke wyssely/ [...] and awnswer the pepll curtesly'
'Goo to thy bed myrely/ and lye therin jocundly'
'Plesse and loffe thy wyffe dewly/ and basse hyr onys or tewys myrely'
The invisible woman
Conclusion
Bibliography
