Impolitic Bodies: Poetry, Saints, and Society in Fifteenth-Century England: The Work of Osbern Bokenham

by Sheila Delany

Overview

With this witty and elegant new book, one of our leading medievalists breaks new ground in fifteenth-century scholarship, a critical site of cultural study. Delany examines the work of English Augustinian friar Osbern Bokenham, a figure never before written on at any length, and fully explores the relations between history and literature in a particularly turbulent period in English history, a period extending from the "War of the Roses" through the "Hundred Years War." Delany focuses on Bokenham's major work, Legends of Holy Women—the first collection of all female saint's lives in any language—composed between 1443 and 1447. Organizing the book around the image of the body—a medieval procedure becoming popular once again in current attention to the social construction of the body—she looks at a number of major concerns. One is Bokenham's relation to the body of English literature, particularly Chaucer. Another is the entire genre of saints's lives, particularly female saints's lives, with their striking uses of the body of the saint to generate their meaning. Yet another is the image of the body politic and its importance in the political and dynastic crises of fifteenth century England. Delany draws these diverse strands together to create an innovative and readable portrait of Bokenham's work and its larger cultural and political importance, offering a host of new insights into this unjustly neglected period in English literary history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195109887
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	02/05/1998
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.90(d)
Lexile:	1400L (what's this?)

About the Author

Sheila Delany is Professor of English at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. She is the author of such books as Chaucer's House of Fame: The Politics of Skeptical Fideism, The Naked Text: Chaucer's Legend of Good Women and Writing Woman, Medieval and Modern.

Editorial Reviews

"Impolitic Bodies," with its exquisite literary and historical contextualization, powerful analysis, and magisterial scope, ranks as one of the best books ever published on a fifteenth-century author. -- John M. Ganim

John M. Ganim

"Original and provocative....An engaging and lively study that should appeal to all faculty and students...of medieval literature and culture."—Choice

"Impolitic Bodies, with its exquisite literary and historical contextualization, powerful analysis, and magisterial scope, ranks as one of the best books ever published on a fifteenth-century author."—John M. Ganim, University of California, Riverside

"...Delany does a masterful job of drawing together a wealth of current criticism's most hotly discussed."—C. Marie Harker, Truman State University

"Absorbing, subtle, complex reading. Among the leading ranks of medieval feminist scholarship, [Impolitic Bodies] may help restore the 15th Century to its rightful place in English literary history."—John McLaughlin, E. Stroudsburg University

"Sheila Delany's book is as complex and ambitious as its title and subtitle suggest....it is a valuable work that adds to more than just the increasing interest in fifteenth-century studies."—Arthuriana

From the Publisher