Artisans and Narrative Craft in Late Medieval England [Paperback]

The first book-length study to articulate the vital presence of artisans and craft labor in medieval English literature from c.10001483.This book explores the representation of artisans  masons, carpenters, blacksmiths, and more  in medieval English literature from c.1000-1483. It reveals that craft labor plays a central role in texts as varied as school-books, comic poems, spiritual literature, and works of political advice.This book explores the representation of artisans  masons, carpenters, blacksmiths, and more  in medieval English literature from c.1000-1483. It reveals that craft labor plays a central role in texts as varied as school-books, comic poems, spiritual literature, and works of political advice.Lisa H. Cooper offers new insight into the relationship of material practice and literary production in the Middle Ages by exploring the representation of craft labor in England from c.1000-1483. She examines genres as diverse as the school-text, comic poem, spiritual allegory, and mirror for princes, and works by authors both well-known (Chaucer, Lydgate, Caxton) and far less so. Whether they represent craft as profitable endeavor, learned skill, or degrading toil, the texts she reviews not only depict artisans as increasingly legitimate members of the body politic, but also deploy images of craft labor and its products to confront other complex issues, including the nature of authorship, the purpose of community, the structure of the household, the fate of the soul, and the scope of princely power.Introduction: a is for artisan; 1. Making conversations: from ?lfric's Colloquy to Caxton's Dialogues; 2. Laboring legends: writing home in fable and fabliau; 3. Shaping souls: artisanal allegory in the Pilgrimage poems of Guillaume de Deguileville and John Lydgate; 4. Mirroring monarchs: Rex/Artifex in the Speculum Principum tradition; Epilogue: crafting nostalgias. &[a] fascinating and eye-opening book. & is bound to change the way we perceive craftsmen ils: