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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
- Share this:
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