The Theology of Debt in Late Medieval English Literature
Title | The Theology of Debt in Late Medieval English Literature PDF eBook |
Author | Anne Schuurman |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | 269 |
Release | 2023-12-31 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 100938595X |
Anne Schuurman makes the striking argument that medieval literature engenders the spirit of capitalism by defining the sinner as debtor.
The Theology of Debt in Late Medieval English Literature
Title | The Theology of Debt in Late Medieval English Literature PDF eBook |
Author | Anne Schuurman |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | 269 |
Release | 2023-12-31 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 1009385968 |
Exploring debt's permutations in Middle English texts, Anne Schuurman makes the bold claim that the capitalist spirit has its roots in Christian penitential theology. Her argument challenges the longstanding belief that faith and theological doctrine in the Middle Ages were inimical to the development of market economies, showing that the same idea of debt is in fact intrinsic to both. The double penitential-financial meaning of debt, and the spiritual paradoxes it creates, is a linchpin of scholastic and vernacular theology, and of the imaginative literature of late medieval England. Focusing on the doubleness of debt, this book traces the dynamic by which the Christian ascetic ideal, in its rejection of material profit and wealth acquisition, ends up producing precisely what it condemns. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.
Money, Commerce, and Economics in Late Medieval English Literature
Title | Money, Commerce, and Economics in Late Medieval English Literature PDF eBook |
Author | Craig E. Bertolet |
Publisher | Springer |
Total Pages | 185 |
Release | 2018-02-07 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 3319719009 |
This is the first collection of essays dedicated to the topics of money and economics in the English literature of the late Middle Ages. These essays explore ways that late medieval economic thought informs contemporary English texts and apply modern modes of economic analysis to medieval literature. In so doing, they read the importance and influence of historical records of practices as aids to contextualizing these texts. They also apply recent modes of economic history as a means to understand the questions the texts ask about economics, trade, and money. Collectively, these papers argue that both medieval and modern economic thought are key to valuable historical contextualization of medieval literary texts, but that this criticism can be advanced only if we also recognize the specificity of the economic and social conditions of late-medieval England.
Excommunication for Debt in Late Medieval France
Title | Excommunication for Debt in Late Medieval France PDF eBook |
Author | Tyler Lange |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | 323 |
Release | 2016-03-24 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1316565378 |
Late medieval church courts frequently excommunicated debtors at the request of their creditors. Tyler Lange analyzes over 11,000 excommunications between 1380 and 1530 in order to explore the forms, rhythms, and cultural significance of the practice. Three case studies demonstrate how excommunication for debt facilitated minor transactions in an age of scarce small-denomination coinage and how interest-free loans and sales credits could be viewed as encouraging the relations of charitable exchange that were supposed to exist between members of Christ's body. Lange also demonstrates how from 1500 or so believers gradually turned away from the practice and towards secular courts, at the same time as they retained the moralized, economically irrational conception of indebtedness we have yet to shake. The demand-driven rise and fall of excommunication for debt reveals how believers began to reshape the institutional Church well before Martin Luther posted his theses.
Women's Genealogies in the Medieval Literary Imagination
Title | Women's Genealogies in the Medieval Literary Imagination PDF eBook |
Author | Emma O. Bérat |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | 247 |
Release | 2024-02-29 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 1009434756 |
Emma O. Bérat shows the centrality of women's legacies to medieval political and literary thought in chronicles, hagiography, and genealogy.
The Oxford Handbook of English Literature and Theology
Title | The Oxford Handbook of English Literature and Theology PDF eBook |
Author | Andrew Hass |
Publisher | Oxford Handbooks Online |
Total Pages | 909 |
Release | 2007-03-15 |
Genre | Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | 0199271976 |
A defining volume of essays in which leading international scholars apply an interdisciplinary approach to the long and evolving relationship between English Literature and Theology.
Excommunication for Debt in Late Medieval France: The Business of Salvation
Title | Excommunication for Debt in Late Medieval France: The Business of Salvation PDF eBook |
Author | Tyler Lange |
Publisher | |
Total Pages | |
Release | 2016 |
Genre | Church and state |
ISBN | 9781316568774 |
A re-evaluation of late medieval church courts' role in the enforcement of minor credit through the widespread, frequent excommunication of debtors.