Poetry Does Theology: Chaucer, Grosseteste, and the Pearl-poet

By James Francis Rhodes and Jim Rhodes

Book Overview

What happens when poetry deals explicitly with a serious theological issue? In Poetry Does Theology, Jim Rhodes seeks one answer to that question by analyzing the symbiotic relationship that existed between theology and poetry in fourteenth-century England. He pays special attention to the narrative poems of Chaucer, Grosseteste, the Pearl-poet, the author of Saint Erkenwald, and Langland. Rhodes shows that Chaucer and his contemporaries wrote at the end of a linguistic and theological revolution-a time when revised perspectives on the creation and incarnation gave rise to a new humanistic spirit that transformed late medieval theological culture and spurred the development of vernacular theology and poetry. Rhodes' careful analysis describes how the relationship between theology and poetry underwent a radical transformation as the latter half of the fourteenth century progressed.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0268038694
• ISBN13: 9780268038694
• Release Date: December 2001
• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.43 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.4"