• The Poetics of Practicality

    Author(s):
    Lisa H. Cooper (see profile)
    Date:
    2007
    Group(s):
    CLCS Medieval, LLC Chaucer, LLC Middle English
    Subject(s):
    English literature, Literature, Medieval, Poetics
    Item Type:
    Book chapter
    Tag(s):
    Medieval literature
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6TW3P
    Abstract:
    This essay explores insistently practical medieval texts—works whose explicit goal is to assist their readers to make something in the world beyond the page (a book, a culinary dish, an ointment, an object) and asks if they can be said to have a poetics. Drawing on Michel de Certeau and Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of practice as well as Gérard Genette’s concepts of literariness, the article examines medieval vocabularies, medical texts, recipes, carving manuals, and several works by Geoffrey Chaucer and John Lydgate to consider the relationship of the poetic and the practical and the broad appeal of the how-to text in late medieval English literature and culture.
    Metadata:
    xml
    Published as:
    Book chapter     Show details
    Pub. DOI:
    10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199287666.013.0030
    Publisher:
    Oxford University Press
    Pub. Date:
    2007
    Book Title:
    Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature: Middle English
    Author/Editor:
    Paul Strohm
    Chapter:
    The Poetics of Practicality
    Page Range:
    491 - 505
    ISBN:
    9780199287666
    Status:
    Published
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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