Literature and the Religious Life in the Middle Ages

FAIN: FA-11346-76

John V. Fleming
Princeton University (Princeton, NJ 08540-5228)

To examine the major relationships between the literary history of medieval Europe and the evolving institutions of medieval asceticism. Study will demonstrate the unexpected but vital influence of monastic literary traditions on such major secular writers as Boccaccio and Chaucer.Severa1 aspects of monastic history of fundamental literary importance will be explored including: the social and literary evolution of the ascetic vision from the Egyptian hermits to the urban evangelists of the mendicant orders; the ways in which the physical and intellectual conditions of religious life nourished certain literary forms and created a durable poetic vocabulary.