"The essays in this collection are carefully written and researched: the abundant notes are a resource in themselves. Many are richly illustrated and offer a wealth of information about the manuscript record. ... If we wish to grasp how medieval aesthetics were just as important to the lives of ordinary people as they were to the rich and the writers they patronized, then we will certainly need more books like this one." (Taylor Cowdery, Speculum, Vol. 96 (2), April, 2021)
Introduction. 1-23
Section I. The Peasants’ RebellioN As SENSORY event.
Chapter 1,
“The Weight of Experience: John Gower and the Peasants’ Revolt”
Joel D. Anderson ……………………………………………………………………………………………
Chapter 2,
“’Stonde Manlyche togedyr in Trewthe’: Lyric and Rebellion Among Late Medieval Men”
Katharine W. Jager.
Chapter 3, “On Bells and Rebellion: The Auditory Imagination and Social Reform, Medieval and Modern”
Adin Lears.
Section II. AESTHETIC RECEPTION: Music and the Multimodal manuscript..
Chapter 4,
“High or Low?: Medieval English Carols as Part of Vernacular Culture, 1380-1450”
Lisa Colton and Louise Mcinnes.
Chapter 5,
“Rethinking the Passion Lyric: Verbal Devotion, Narrative Variation, and the Poetics of Comfort in Middle English Poetry”
Barbara Zimbalist……………………………………………………………………………………….
Chapter 6,
“Multimodality and Memory in the Mise-en-page of Guillaume de Machaut’s Mass”
Kate Maxwell.
Chapter 1, Introduction: Past Vernaculars: The Aesthetic and the Everyday
Katherine W. Jager
SECTION I: THE PEASANTS' REBELLION AS SENSORY EVENT
Chapter 2,
“The Weight of Experience: John Gower and the Peasants’ Revolt”
Joel D. Anderson
Chapter 3,
“’Stonde Manlyche togedyr in Trewthe’: Lyric and Rebellion Among Late Medieval Men”
Katharine W. Jager
Chapter 4, “On Bells and Rebellion: The Auditory Imagination and Social Reform, Medieval and Modern”
Adin Lears
Section II. AESTHETIC RECEPTION: Music and the Multimodal manuscript.
Chapter 5,
“High or Low?: Medieval English Carols as Part of Vernacular Culture, 1380-1450”
Lisa Colton and Louise Mcinnes
Chapter 6,
“Rethinking the Passion Lyric: Verbal Devotion, Narrative Variation, and the Poetics of Comfort in Middle English Poetry”
Barbara Zimbalist……………………………………………………………………………………….
Chapter 7,
“Multimodality and Memory in the Mise-en-page of Guillaume de Machaut’s Mass”
Kate Maxwell
Section III. Vernacular Practice: Alchemy, Aesthetics, Affect
Chapter 8,
“Alchemical Language: Latin and the Vernacular in the Poetry of Thomas Norton and John Gower”
David Hadbawnik
Chapter 9,
“Vernacular ‘Makynge,’ Jack Upland, and the Aesthetics of Antfraternalism
Noëlle Phillips
Chapter 10,
“Read It and Weep: Affective and Literate Engagement in Richard Rolle’s Meditations and The Book of Margery Kempe”
Jessica Barr
Katharine W. Jager is a poet and medieval scholar. She is Associate Professor of English at the University of Houston–Downtown, USA, and has published essays on medieval aesthetics, the masculine performativity of chivalric speech acts, onomatopoeia and multimodality in alliterative verse, and aurality in late medieval English poetry, among other subjects.
VernacularAesthetics in the Later Middle Ages explores the formal composition, public performance, and popular reception of vernacular poetry, music, and prose within late medieval French and English cultures. This collection of essays considers the extra-literary and extra-textual methods by which vernacular forms and genres were obtained and examines the roles that performance and orality play in the reception and dissemination of those genres, arguing that late medieval vernacular forms can be used to delineate the interests and perspectives of the subaltern. Via an interdisciplinary approach, contributors use theories of multimodality, translation, manuscript studies, sound studies, gender studies, and activist New Formalism to address how and for whom popular, vernacular medieval forms were made.