Title Background

<i>The Laborer’s Two Bodies: Labor and the ‘Work’ of the Text in Medieval Britain 1350–1500</i>, 1350–1500</i>

The Laborer’s Two Bodies: Labor and the ‘Work’ of the Text in Medieval Britain 1350–1500, 1350–1500

Explores the intellectual, cultural, and political consequences of one of the most fundamental shifts in late medieval English society: the first national labor regulation in the wake of the 1348 plague. Bridging the medieval and early modern periods, this book analyses a wide range of texts and images produced in this initial period of labor regulation (1349 to 1500), including texts by Chaucer, Gower, L, the Paston Family, and Barclay. Robertson attempts to demonstrate that the category of ‘labor’ became increasingly problematic for writers who struggled to understand the meaning of work in a world where labor was simultaneously understood as punishment, virtue, and reward. Chapters one and two include extensive discussion of PPl, especially the removal of B.7’s tearing of the pardon from C.9, the grammatical metaphor of C.3, and the apologia pro vita sua of C.5.

Rev. by:

  • David Aers, YLS, 19 (2005), 226–36;
  • Kathleen Ashley, Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 29 (2007), 539–42;
  • Andrew Galloway, Speculum, 82 (2007), 758–59;
  • Verena Postel, Medieval Review, 07.04.15 (http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.baj9928.0704.015).