Leeds Medieval Studies, 4 (2024)
ISSN 2754-4575 (Print)
ISSN 2754-4583 (Online)
Articles
- Poverty, Reform, and Holistic Solutions: Situating the poor in the disendowment programme of John Wyclif
This paper offers a new socially oriented reading of the place of the poor in John Wyclif's reformist vision for the Church. Wyclif's dependence on the lay lords as agents of his programme of disendowment has been read as deference to aristocratic interests, with his allusions to the poor construed primarily as rhetorical justification of a policy aimed at enriching the lay elite. This paper challenges this prevailing interpretation by highlighting the holistic nature of Wyclif's programme and by pushing back against the equation of benefit with direct financial remuneration. By examining Wyclif's imagined ripple effects of the enrichment of the lay lords, his departures from usages of the poor in the rhetorical tradition, and his encouragement of small-scale acts of disendowment at the level of the individual, this paper argues that improving the plight of the poor was not simply an expedient talking point, but rather an integral facet of Wyclif's programme. - Thomas Campbell and the Unmaking of John Gower
Until relatively recently, John Gower had a claim to be one of the authors most dramatically fallen from favour in all of English literature. Following the indifference of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century readers, a fate which befell most medieval English authors, Gower received a disdainful dressing-down in the Scottish poet Thomas Campbell’s much-reprinted anthology Specimens of the British Poets (1819). Campbell objects to the moral opportunism, religious ceremony, and poetic design of Gower’s Confessio Amantis. Isolating Campbell’s dispraise as a pivotal episode in Gower’s postmedieval reception, this article draws comparisons to other contemporary responses to Gower’s poetry — many of them warmer than Campbell’s. Among the sour judgements upon Gower at the turn of the nineteenth century, it is argued that Campbell’s was the one that made the most difference. Nineteenth-century appreciation for Gower’s trilingual poetic art was hampered by lyricization, that is, the process by which readers came to conflate lyric with poetry in general, coupled with the ideology of monolingual nationalism. - Exploring the Socio-Religious World of Medieval Bengal Through the Lens of the Mangalkavya Literature
This article examines the relationship between Islam and Brahmanism in medieval Bengal through the Mangalkavya texts. Mangalkavyas were narrative poems that were dedicated to specific deities and had a performative dimension. From the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, these texts combined piety and leisure, and enjoyed immense popularity across rural Bengal. The establishment of Islamic political rule in 1204 in Bengal brought about momentous changes in the social, economic, and political landscape of Bengal. However, one of the most important developments that took place in this period was the arrival of Islam into the region. The liberal and egalitarian rhetoric of Islam meant that it soon emerged as a challenge to the Brahmanical order in Bengal. It is at this crucial juncture that Mangalkavyas make their appearance in the Bengali countryside. This article analyses several Mangalkavya texts to find answers to the following two questions: firstly, did Islam play any role in stimulating the production of these texts, and secondly how did these texts respond to and engage with Islam? Answering these questions helps in understanding the rationale behind the composition of Mangalkavyas while providing an insight into the dynamic engagements between Brahmanism and Islam in Medieval Bengal.