We see that javascript is disabled or not supported by your browser - javascript is needed for important actions on the site. Read more

What's New - Home - Login

Member $avings: $81,567,905.93 | Books Available: 795,593 | Members Online: 269

Swap Used Books - Buy New Books at Great Prices!

How To Swap Books Sign Up Search submenu

PBS Market (New Books)

Gift Buying Guide

Book Browser Advanced Search Books Posted Today Member Book Reviews Award Winning Books NYT Best Sellers Amazon Best Sellers Most Traveled Copies Club Wish List

Discussion Forums Book Lists

Club Lists My Book Lists My Watched Lists Create a List

Blog Donations

School Donation Program In Memory of... Military Donation Program Friends of PBS

Box-O-Books Maps The Eclectic Pen Fun Stuff

20 Questions Sudoku Bookmark Creator

Top 100

Requests Posts Swappers Referrers Reviewers

Pulse of PBS Spread The Word

Invite Friends Bookmarks Facebook Page Facebook App More Ways...

Photo Gallery Recipes Club Tag Cloud Member Testimonials

Help Center submenu

How To Swap Books Browse Help Docs Ask the Librarian PBS Member Icons Live Help

Kiosk

PBS Market (New Books) Go Shopping Buy Credits Buy PBS Money Upgrade Membership Gift Certificates Transfer Credits

Need Help?

Search - Beyond Reformation?: An Essay on William Langland's Piers Plowman and the End of Constantinian Christianty

Beyond Reformation An Essay on William Langland's Piers Plowman and the End of Constantinian Christianty
Author: David Aers

In Beyond Reformation? An Essay on William Langland?s Piers Plowman and the End of Constantinian Christianity, David Aers presents a sustained and profound close reading of the final version of William Langland?s Piers Plowman, the most searching Christian poem of the Middle Ages in English. His reading, most unusually, seeks to explore the rela... more »tions of Langland's poem to both medieval and early modern reformations together with the ending of Constantinian Christianity.

Aers concentrates on Langland?s extraordinarily rich ecclesiastic politics and on his account of Christian virtues and the struggles of Conscience to discern how to go on in his often baffling culture. The poem?s complex allegory engages with most institutions and forms of life. In doing so, it explores moral languages and their relations to current practices and social tendencies. Langland?s vision conveys a strange sense that in his historical moment some moral concepts were being transformed and some traditions the author cherished were becoming unintelligible. Beyond Reformation? seeks to show how Langland grasped subtle shifts that were difficult to discern in the fourteenth century but were to become forces with a powerful future in shaping Western Christianity.

The essay form that Aers has chosen for his book contributes to the effectiveness of the argument he develops in tandem with the structure of Langland?s poem: he sustains and tests his argument in a series of steps or ?passus,? a Langlandian mode of proceeding. His essay unfolds an argument about medieval and early modern forms of Constantinian Christianity and reformation, and the way in which Langland's own vision of a secularizing, de-Christianizing late medieval church draws him toward the idea of a church of ?fools,? beyond papacy, priesthood, hierarchy, and institutions. For Aers, Langland opens up serious diachronic issues concerning Christianity and culture. His essay includes a brief summary of the poem and modern translations alongside the original medieval English. It will challenge specialists on Langland's poem and supply valuable resources of thought for anyone who continues to struggle with the church of today.

?David Aers, as a master interpreter, shows us how he reads Langland and, while doing so, instructs us in how to read. His brilliant essay models for us how it is possible, and indeed desirable, to open the usually well-policed border between theological reflection and literary analysis and thereby aim at a fuller reading of what a life of faith encompasses. Along the way, we gain an appreciation of William Langland?s formidable Middle English epic masterpiece, Piers Plowman, and the riches it repays our careful attention.?

?James Wetzel, Augustinian Endowed Chair in the thought of St. Augustine and Professor of Philosophy, Villanova University

ISBN-13: 9780268020460
ISBN-10: 0268020469
Publication Date: 11/15/2015
Pages: 248
Edition: 1
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
Book Type: Paperback
Members Wishing: 1
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Genres:

Literature & Fiction >> History & Criticism >> Criticism & Theory
Literature & Fiction >> History & Criticism >> Movements & Periods >> Medieval
Literature & Fiction >> History & Criticism >> Genres & Styles >> Poetry
Literature & Fiction >> Poetry >> Regional & Cultural >> European >> British & Irish
Literature & Fiction >> Poetry >> Inspirational & Religious
Religion & Spirituality
Christian Books & Bibles >> Church History
Christian Books & Bibles >> Literature & Fiction >> Poetry
Christian Books & Bibles >> History

Back to the Top ↑

Search - Beyond Reformation?: An Essay on William Langland's Piers Plowman and the End of Constantinian Christianty

Loading...