The Grounds of English Literature by Cannon, Christopher;

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Product details:

Publisher OUP Oxford
Date of Publication 29 November 2007

ISBN 9780199230396
Binding Paperback
No. of pages250 pages
Size 215x137x15 mm
Weight 323 g
Language English
Illustrations halftones

Short description:

The centuries just after the Norman Conquest are the forgotten period of English Literary History. Yet the years 1066-1300 witnessed an unparalleled ingenuity in the creation of written forms. Using an innovative theory of literary form applied to a series of detailed readings of the more important early Middle English works, Cannon shows how the many and varied texts of the period laid the foundations for the project of English Literature.

Long description:

The centuries just after the Norman Conquest are the forgotten period of English literary history. In fact, the years 1066-1300 witnessed an unparalleled ingenuity in the creation of written forms, for this was a time when almost every writer was unaware of the existence of other English writing. In a series of detailed readings of the more important early Middle English works, Cannon shows how the many and varied texts of the period laid the foundations for the project of English literature. This richness is for the first time given credit in these readings by means of an innovative theory of literary form that accepts every written shape as itself a unique contribution to the history of ideas. This theory also suggests that the impoverished understanding of literature we now commonly employ is itself a legacy of this early period, an attribute of the single form we have learned to call 'romance'. A number of reading methods have lately taught us to be more generous in our understandings of what literature might be, but this book shows us that the very variety we now strive to embrace anew actually formed the grounds of English literature-a richness we only lost when we forgot how to recognize it.

Review from previous edition This extraordinary book will have a transformative impact on the study of Middle English literary production in the centuries following the Norman Conquest. Its greatness lies in the sophistication and brilliance with which it generates entirely new questions - in a sense an entirely new field - out of a written milieu the author defines as the very "grounds of English literature", allowing the formal proclivities of the artefacts he examines to generate the theoretical, formalist, and historical lines of enquiry the book itself pursues. This is surely one of the most significant and groundbreaking books ever written on pre-Ricardian English literature.