In "The Claims of Poverty," Kate Crassons explores a widespread ideological crisis concerning poverty that emerged in the aftermath of the plague in late medieval England. She identifies poverty as a central preoccupation in texts ranging from "Piers Plowman "and Wycliffite writings to "The Book of Margery Kempe" and the York cycle plays. Crassons shows that these and other works form a complex body of writing in which poets, dramatists, and preachers anxiously wrestled with the status of poverty as a force that is at once a sacred imitation of Christ and a social stigma; a voluntary form...
In "The Claims of Poverty," Kate Crassons explores a widespread ideological crisis concerning poverty that emerged in the aftermath of the plague i...
