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The concept of Purgatory in Middle English didactic writings is explored through examination of visions of the afterlife, sermons, homiletic treatises, and lyrics. Purgatory has been the focus of much literary and historical attention since Jacques Le Goff's important Naissance du Purgatoire(1981), but this is the first book-length study to trace its development, reception and influence in Middle English literature.Following a survey of the doctrine of Purgatory and its cultural reception, the book explores the two major Middle English genres in which it is discussed, visions of the afterlife, and didactic andhomiletic treatises on death. In a detailed examination of these, along with sermon...
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The present volume contains twelve new essays on didactic verse, with a broad time-sweep ranging from the most ancient literature (Sumeria) through to the early-modern age (seventeenth-century England). Considered collectively, the contents illustrate the transmission of this important literary kind from Ancient to Modern times, and from east to west, from south to north. The Romantic age led to the lyric being seen as the dominant poetical mode, and today it has become almost axiomatic to view the chief function of poetry as the articulation of the thoughts and emotions of the individual; a concomitant assumption is that the essential quality of poetry is the aesthetic. However, in other cu...
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