Brings together essays by a diverse group of medievalists to consider the multiple ways in which readers approach texts and manuscripts as part of various "communities" of readers, authors, scribes, and scholars.

"The Text in the Community" brings together essays by a diverse group of medievalists to consider the multiple ways in which readers approach texts and manuscripts as part of various "communities" of readers, authors, scribes, and scholars. The central premise of this volume is that texts do not exist in isolation. Each written work is embedded in a wide variety of contexts - literary, historical, geographical, social, political, and religious - and derives its meaning in part from the intersection of those contexts in the reader's experience of the text. This collection is distinguished by a...

During the fifteenth century John Lydgate was the most famous poet in England, filling commissions for the court, the aristocracy, and the guilds. He wrote for an elite London readership that was historically very small, but that saw itself as dominating the cultural life of the nation. Thus the new literary forms and modes developed by Lydgate and his contemporaries helped shape the development of English public culture in the fifteenth century. Maura Nolan presents a major re-interpretation of Lydgate's work and of his central role in the developing literary culture of his time.

During the fifteenth century John Lydgate was the most famous poet in England, filling commissions for the court, the aristocracy, and the guilds. He wrote for an elite London readership that was historically very small, but that saw itself as dominating the cultural life of the nation. Thus the new literary forms and modes developed by Lydgate and his contemporaries helped shape the development of English public culture in the fifteenth century. Maura Nolan presents a major re-interpretation of Lydgate's work and of his central role in the developing literary culture of his time.