Rewriting Parables in Late Medieval England

FAIN: FT-60028-12

Mary Lynn Raschko
Corporation Of Mercer University (Macon, GA 31207-1515)

Subversive Scriptures: Rewriting Parables in Late Medieval England explores the intersection of fictional narrative and religious practices, asking how writers translated and adapted gospel parables in an age when both literacy and debates about orthodox belief were on the rise. As the title suggests, the book investigates how these gospel stories can run counter to or undermine social and religious values. It reveals that late medieval authors responded to the stories with their own acts of subversion: they revised parables to enhance their disruption of cultural norms or redirected scripture to support defining aspects of late medieval Christianity, reconfiguring both the stories themselves and their relation to issues ranging from poverty and labor to penance and forgiveness. While focusing on late medieval England, the study speaks to larger issues of how humans employ their imaginative faculties to reconcile ideas about divinity with everyday living in the world.

Associated Products

The Politics of Middle English Parables: Fiction, Theology, and Social Practice (Book)
Title: The Politics of Middle English Parables: Fiction, Theology, and Social Practice
Author: Mary Raschko
Abstract: The politics of Middle English parables examines the dynamic intersection of fiction, theology and social practice in late-medieval England. Parables occupy a prominent place in Middle English literature, appearing in dream visions and story collections as well as in lives of Christ and devotional treatises. While most scholarship approaches the translated stories as stable vehicles of Christian teaching, this book highlights the many variations and points of conflict across Middle English renditions of the same story. In parables related to labour, social inequality, charity and penance, the book locates a creative theological discourse through which writers attempted to re-construct Christian belief and practice. Analysis of these diverse retellings reveals not what a given parable meant in a definitive sense but rather how Middle English parables inscribe the ideologies, power structures and cultural debates of late-medieval Christianity.
Year: 2018
Primary URL: http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526131171/
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 97815261311
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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