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Middle English mouths: late medieval medical, religious and literary traditions

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posted on 2023-06-09, 08:29 authored by Katie WalterKatie Walter
The mouth, responsible for both physical and spiritual functions - eating, drinking, breathing, praying and confessing - was of immediate importance to medieval thinking about the nature of the human being. Where scholars have traditionally focused on the mouth's grotesque excesses, Katie L. Walter argues for the recuperation of its material 'everyday' aspect. Walter's original study draws on two rich archives: one comprising Middle English theology (Langland, Julian of Norwich, Lydgate, Chaucer) and pastoral writings; the other broadly medical and surgical, including learned encyclopaedias and vernacular translations and treatises. Challenging several critical orthodoxies about the centrality of sight, the hierarchy of the senses and the separation of religious from medical discourses, the book reveals the centrality of the mouth, taste and touch to human modes of knowing and to Christian identity.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Place of publication

Cambridge

ISBN

9781108426619

Series

Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature (105)

Department affiliated with

  • English Publications

Research groups affiliated with

  • Centre for Early Modern and Medieval Studies Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2017-10-30

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