From Lawmen to Plowmen
Stephen Yeager
The reappearance of alliterative verse in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries remains one of the most puzzling issues in the literary history of medieval England. In From Lawmen to Plowmen, Stephen M. Yeager offers a fresh, insightful explanation for the alliterative structure of William Langland’s Piers Plowman and the flourishing of alliterative verse satires in late medieval England by observing the similarities between these satires and the legal-homiletical literature of the Anglo-Saxon era.
Unlike Old English alliterative poetry, Anglo-Saxon legal texts and documents continued to be studied long after the Norman Conquest. By comparing Anglo-Saxon charters, sermons, and law codes ... Read more
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About Stephen Yeager
Reviews for From Lawmen to Plowmen
M.B. Busbee
Choice Magazine vol 52:11:2015
‘Yeager’s literary-historical argument is powerful and marches on firmly to the fifteenth-century poems of the Piers Plowmen… It convincingly demonstrates the durability of certain Anglo-Saxon attitudes as they were annealed in the distinction of style.’ ... Read more