Minnis Alastair. Translations of Authority in Medieval English Literature

Cambridge University Press, 2009. — 290 p.In Translations of Authority in Medieval English Literature, leading critic Alastair Minnis presents the fruits of a long-term engagement with the ways in which crucial ideological issues were deployed in vernacular texts. The concept of the vernacular is seen as possessing a value far beyond the category of language – as encompassing popular beliefs and practices which could either confirm or contest those authorized by church and state institutions.
Minnis addresses the crisis for vernacular translation precipitated by the Lollard heresy; the minimal engagement with Nominalism in late fourteenth-century poetry; Langland’s views on indulgences; the heretical theology of Walter Brut; Margery Kempe’s self-promoting Biblical exegesis; and Chaucer’s tales of suspicious saints and risible relics. These discussions disclose different aspects of ‘vernacularity’, enabling a fuller understanding of its complexity and potency.Alastair Minnis is the Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of English at Yale University. Recent authored works include Magister Amoris: The ‘Roman de la Rose’ and Vernacular Hermeneutics (2001), and Fallible Authors: Chaucer’s Pardoner and Wife of Bath (2007). In addition, he has edited or co-edited fourteen other books, including (with Ian Johnson) The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, ii: The Middle Ages (2005). He is also the General Editor of Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature.