Criticism and Dissent in the Middle Ages

This 1996 collection of essays examines aspects of medieval literary theory in relation to questions of orthodoxy and dissent.

What were the boundaries between 'official' and 'subversive', 'orthodox' and 'dissenting' practices in medieval literary theory? This 1996 collection of essays by major scholars examines critical practices of the Middle Ages in relation to questions of orthodoxy and dissent within and between Latin and vernacular cultures.What were the boundaries between 'official' and 'subversive', 'orthodox' and 'dissenting' critical practices in the Middle Ages? Placing medieval critical and intellectual discourses within their cultural and ideological frameworks, Criticism and Dissent in the Middle Ages examines conflicts of gender, violence, academic freedom, hermeneutical authority, sacramentalism and heresy among so-called official as well as dissenting critical orders. Pedagogies, theories of grammar and rhetoric, poetics and hermeneutics, academic 'sciences', clerical professionalism, literacy, visual images, theology, and textual cultures of heresy are all considered. This 1996 collection of essays by major scholars examines medieval critical discourse, theories of textuality and interpretation, and representations of learning and knowledge - as contesting and contested institutional practices within and between Latin and vernacular cultures.