The Harrowing of Hell in Medieval England.

Discusses L on pp. 141–47. While critics have downplayed L’s familiarity with the Gospel of Nicodemus, his portrayal of Christ’s Harrowing of Hell is clearly indebted to it. L transmutes his source in a way that is dazzling and original. Tamburr carefully traces the affinities between the two, showing that L ‘goes beyond Nicodemus in the way he combines the Descensus episode and the Easter liturgy in his version of the Harrowing of Hell. His incredible comprehensiveness allows him to gather material from many sources and metamorphose them into something unique in literary accounts of the Descent, something midway between the historical commemoration of the event and the liturgical reliving of it’ (pp. 146–47).