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LAY PIETY AND RELIGIOUS DISCIPLINE
IN MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE
In late fourteenth-century England, the persistent question of how to
live the best life upied many pious Christians. One answer was
provided by a new genre of prose guides that adapted professional
religious rules and routines for lay audiences. These texts engaged
with many of the same cultural questions as poets like Langland and
Chaucer; however, they have not received the critical attention they
deserve until now. Nicole Rice analyses how the idea of religious
discipline was translated into varied literary forms in an atmosphere
of religious change and controversy. By considering the themes of
spiritual discipline, religious identity, and orthodoxy in Langland and
Chaucer, the study also brings fresh perspectives to bear on Piers
Plowman and The Canterbury Tales. This new juxtaposition of spiri-
tual guidance and poetry will form an important contribution to our
understanding of both authors and of late medieval religious practice
and thought.
nicole r. rice is Associate Professor of English at St. John’s
University.
cambridge studies in medieval literature
general editor
Alastair Minnis, Yale University
editorial board
Zygmunt G. Baranski,´ University of Cambridge
Christopher C. Baswell, University of California, Los Angeles
John Burrow, University of Bristol
Mary Carruthers, New York University
Rita Copeland, University of Pennsylvania
Simon Gaunt, King’s College, London
Steven Kruger, City University of New York
Nigel Palmer, University of Oxford
Winthrop Wetherbee, Cornell University
Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, University of York
This series of critical books seeks to cover the whole area of literature written in
the major medieval languages – the main European vernaculars, and medieval
Latin and Greek – during the period c. –. Its chief aim is to publish and
stimulate fresh scholarship and criticism on medi