Mishtooni Bose | University of Oxford (original) (raw)
Papers by Mishtooni Bose
The Review of English Studies, Oct 22, 2020
Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2006
According to Alain de Libera, ‘the thirteenth-century appearance of the intellectual’ (‘l’apparit... more According to Alain de Libera, ‘the thirteenth-century appearance of the intellectual’ (‘l’apparition de l’intellectuel’) was a decisive moment in the history of the West.1 Tracing the evolution of medieval intellectual life has led to similarly decisive developments in modern historiography. The study of medieval intellectual history is a particularly engaging and seductive task for modern scholars because the objects of our study can seem rather gratifyingly like ourselves: clercs, mediators between different social worlds, leading lives fraught with paradox; at once closely bound up with, and distant from, the worlds of commerce and politics, simultaneously admired and distrusted, consulted and controlled. The parallels could be taken further, casting modern intellectual historians as hopeful interpreters of culture, and thereby playing roles analogous to those of the medieval theologians described by Jean Dunbabin as ‘go-betweens’ in their own ‘two-culture society’.2
Fordham University Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2020
mong the discursive modes of late-medieval En glish religious writing, "exploratory intellection"... more mong the discursive modes of late-medieval En glish religious writing, "exploratory intellection" of the conceptual density and originality so abundantly exhibited in the writings of Julian of Norwich is a rare phenomenon. 1 But despite this challenge from the primary sources, better justice could still be done to the full range of cognitive and experiential modes of which En glish writers in this period appear to have been aware. 2 Th is essay is accordingly concerned with va ri e ties of intellectual experience-thinking, knowing, the generation of insight, argument and judgment, and even the explicit enjoyment of such mental activities-that persisted in lit er a ture produced in Eng land in the aft ermath of the Wycliffi te controversies. En glish intellectual life during this period can seem many things to the modern scholar: diff use, diverse, intriguing, and diffi cult to bring into focus. 3 But one of the most obvious ways in which Eu rope made its presence felt in En glish religious and intellectual culture aft er Wyclif was through the medium of translation. Even if the sometimes controversial histories of their sources may not always have been known to En glish translators or readers, translations provided routes whereby a rich archive of intellectually engaged texts, comparable in density and ambition to Julian's writings, might be given expression in En glish. 4 A group of texts that exemplify this pro cess, the En glish translations of Guillaume de Deguileville's Pèlerinage de l'âme (1355; hereaft er PA) and of both recensions of his Pèlerinage de la vie humaine (hereaft er PVH1 [1331] and PVH2 [1350s]), appeared during a period of "curiously intimate as well as adversarial contact" between Eng land and France. 5 Th e Pilgrimage of the Sowle (hereaft er Sowle), an anonymous prose translation of PA, was made in 1413. 6 Th e Pilgrimage of the Lyfe of the Manhode (hereaft er Manhode), an
New medieval literatures, 2010
This essay analyses ways in which recent, and in particular literary, scholarship has explored so... more This essay analyses ways in which recent, and in particular literary, scholarship has explored sources of renewal in English intellectual life during the century that separated the beginning of the Council of Constance (1414–18) and the conclusion of the Fifth Lateran Council (1512–14). Concentrating largely on intellectual life in clerical, homosocial textual cultures, it also takes into account other ways of looking at the long fifteenth century. Beginning with a consideration of the way in which the Council of Constance is currently being written into the intellectual and literary history of this period, the essay broadens in scope to explore how interest in ecclesiastical reform acted as a channel for important currents in late medieval English intellectual life. Finally, it considers how recent critical narratives are investigating examples of clerical and secular humanism in the period, the dynamics of the latter having been notably illuminated by the comparative approach adopted in a recent study o...
The Yearbook of Langland studies, 2010
The Yearbook of Langland studies, 2005
The Review of English Studies, May 1, 2001
... Anne Vaughan Lock, the daughter of a London mercer, produced two substantial translations, bo... more ... Anne Vaughan Lock, the daughter of a London mercer, produced two substantial translations, both from French, separated by thirty years: Sermons of John ... as an `Apothecarie' who has produced `Physicke' for the soul in the form of his sequence of sermons on Isaiah 38, which ...
The Review of English Studies, Sep 1, 2003
Music & Letters, Feb 1, 1996
... have sought to demonstrate that the structural and affective characteristics of this 'mu... more ... have sought to demonstrate that the structural and affective characteristics of this 'musical oration' were directly influenced by the contemporary theory and practice of verbal rhetoric.2 The most extended treatment of this topic has been carried out by Robert Toft, in whose work ...
Medium Aevum, 1996
L'exemple de Salomon montre que les ecrivains du Moyen Age n'hesitaient pas a developper ... more L'exemple de Salomon montre que les ecrivains du Moyen Age n'hesitaient pas a developper avec humour et pragmatisme et a s'ecarter des modeles d'interpretation etablis par les exegetes. Les exemples traites par l'A. montrent que les ecrivains avaient conscience d'un fosse entre les dimensions enigmatique et majesteuse de la legende de Salomon. Des gens comme Chaucer placaient ces caracteristiques au centre de leur oeuvre. D'autres transformaient la legende en roman capable de guerir les blessures de l'histoire pre-chretienne a travers une allegorie spirituelle
Oxford University Press eBooks, Sep 18, 2012
This article focuses on Omnis plantacio, an English sermon that shows how a series of complex rel... more This article focuses on Omnis plantacio, an English sermon that shows how a series of complex relationships were evolving between writing, heresy, and anticlericalism in late medieval England. It discusses the intraclerical critiques contained in the sermon and its relentless castigation of failing clerical ranks. It compares and contrasts the works of several authors including Piers Plowman and some Wycliffite texts, and Thomas Netter and John Audelay.
Disputatio, 2018
No matter whether one consults the B- or C-text of Piers Plowman, the word experience appears onl... more No matter whether one consults the B- or C-text of Piers Plowman, the word experience appears only once, a fact that contrasts provocatively with its significance as a keyword in some studies of the poem. Thus, in the wake of Anne Middleton’s crediting Langland with nothing less than ‘the invention of experience as a literary category’, James Simpson has identified ‘the discourses of experience and morality’ as being fundamental to the poem, and describes the vernacular in which such discourses are fashioned as one whose domain is typically that of ‘the experiential, the new, the contingent’. More recently, Emily Steiner has interpreted the poem’s engagements with logic and rhetoric, intellect and affect as serving the conviction that contraries are ‘the ground of experience’. Emphasizing the word’s medieval association with the gathering of sensory information, Maggie Ross observes that ‘[e]xperience is the way self-consciousness interprets the world’. In this context, no less than the metrical choices of the Gawain-poet, the crammed alliterative lines of Piers Plowman could be described as often insisting on ‘the sheer impact of phenomena on the consciousness to which they are exposed’, thereby furthering the poem’s continuous invitation to experiential engagement. Such engagement is also the main theme of this essay, in which I will show how a thought experiment in Piers Plowman facilitates critical reflection on a fundamental parallel between its revisionist poetics and its representation of the Incarnation as the manifestation of God’s desire to learn about his creation
Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures, 2012
Europe After Wyclif
mong the discursive modes of late-medieval En glish religious writing, "exploratory intellection"... more mong the discursive modes of late-medieval En glish religious writing, "exploratory intellection" of the conceptual density and originality so abundantly exhibited in the writings of Julian of Norwich is a rare phenomenon. 1 But despite this challenge from the primary sources, better justice could still be done to the full range of cognitive and experiential modes of which En glish writers in this period appear to have been aware. 2 Th is essay is accordingly concerned with va ri e ties of intellectual experience-thinking, knowing, the generation of insight, argument and judgment, and even the explicit enjoyment of such mental activities-that persisted in lit er a ture produced in Eng land in the aft ermath of the Wycliffi te controversies. En glish intellectual life during this period can seem many things to the modern scholar: diff use, diverse, intriguing, and diffi cult to bring into focus. 3 But one of the most obvious ways in which Eu rope made its presence felt in En glish religious and intellectual culture aft er Wyclif was through the medium of translation. Even if the sometimes controversial histories of their sources may not always have been known to En glish translators or readers, translations provided routes whereby a rich archive of intellectually engaged texts, comparable in density and ambition to Julian's writings, might be given expression in En glish. 4 A group of texts that exemplify this pro cess, the En glish translations of Guillaume de Deguileville's Pèlerinage de l'âme (1355; hereaft er PA) and of both recensions of his Pèlerinage de la vie humaine (hereaft er PVH1 [1331] and PVH2 [1350s]), appeared during a period of "curiously intimate as well as adversarial contact" between Eng land and France. 5 Th e Pilgrimage of the Sowle (hereaft er Sowle), an anonymous prose translation of PA, was made in 1413. 6 Th e Pilgrimage of the Lyfe of the Manhode (hereaft er Manhode), an
The Review of English Studies, Oct 22, 2020
Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2006
According to Alain de Libera, ‘the thirteenth-century appearance of the intellectual’ (‘l’apparit... more According to Alain de Libera, ‘the thirteenth-century appearance of the intellectual’ (‘l’apparition de l’intellectuel’) was a decisive moment in the history of the West.1 Tracing the evolution of medieval intellectual life has led to similarly decisive developments in modern historiography. The study of medieval intellectual history is a particularly engaging and seductive task for modern scholars because the objects of our study can seem rather gratifyingly like ourselves: clercs, mediators between different social worlds, leading lives fraught with paradox; at once closely bound up with, and distant from, the worlds of commerce and politics, simultaneously admired and distrusted, consulted and controlled. The parallels could be taken further, casting modern intellectual historians as hopeful interpreters of culture, and thereby playing roles analogous to those of the medieval theologians described by Jean Dunbabin as ‘go-betweens’ in their own ‘two-culture society’.2
Fordham University Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2020
mong the discursive modes of late-medieval En glish religious writing, "exploratory intellection"... more mong the discursive modes of late-medieval En glish religious writing, "exploratory intellection" of the conceptual density and originality so abundantly exhibited in the writings of Julian of Norwich is a rare phenomenon. 1 But despite this challenge from the primary sources, better justice could still be done to the full range of cognitive and experiential modes of which En glish writers in this period appear to have been aware. 2 Th is essay is accordingly concerned with va ri e ties of intellectual experience-thinking, knowing, the generation of insight, argument and judgment, and even the explicit enjoyment of such mental activities-that persisted in lit er a ture produced in Eng land in the aft ermath of the Wycliffi te controversies. En glish intellectual life during this period can seem many things to the modern scholar: diff use, diverse, intriguing, and diffi cult to bring into focus. 3 But one of the most obvious ways in which Eu rope made its presence felt in En glish religious and intellectual culture aft er Wyclif was through the medium of translation. Even if the sometimes controversial histories of their sources may not always have been known to En glish translators or readers, translations provided routes whereby a rich archive of intellectually engaged texts, comparable in density and ambition to Julian's writings, might be given expression in En glish. 4 A group of texts that exemplify this pro cess, the En glish translations of Guillaume de Deguileville's Pèlerinage de l'âme (1355; hereaft er PA) and of both recensions of his Pèlerinage de la vie humaine (hereaft er PVH1 [1331] and PVH2 [1350s]), appeared during a period of "curiously intimate as well as adversarial contact" between Eng land and France. 5 Th e Pilgrimage of the Sowle (hereaft er Sowle), an anonymous prose translation of PA, was made in 1413. 6 Th e Pilgrimage of the Lyfe of the Manhode (hereaft er Manhode), an
New medieval literatures, 2010
This essay analyses ways in which recent, and in particular literary, scholarship has explored so... more This essay analyses ways in which recent, and in particular literary, scholarship has explored sources of renewal in English intellectual life during the century that separated the beginning of the Council of Constance (1414–18) and the conclusion of the Fifth Lateran Council (1512–14). Concentrating largely on intellectual life in clerical, homosocial textual cultures, it also takes into account other ways of looking at the long fifteenth century. Beginning with a consideration of the way in which the Council of Constance is currently being written into the intellectual and literary history of this period, the essay broadens in scope to explore how interest in ecclesiastical reform acted as a channel for important currents in late medieval English intellectual life. Finally, it considers how recent critical narratives are investigating examples of clerical and secular humanism in the period, the dynamics of the latter having been notably illuminated by the comparative approach adopted in a recent study o...
The Yearbook of Langland studies, 2010
The Yearbook of Langland studies, 2005
The Review of English Studies, May 1, 2001
... Anne Vaughan Lock, the daughter of a London mercer, produced two substantial translations, bo... more ... Anne Vaughan Lock, the daughter of a London mercer, produced two substantial translations, both from French, separated by thirty years: Sermons of John ... as an `Apothecarie' who has produced `Physicke' for the soul in the form of his sequence of sermons on Isaiah 38, which ...
The Review of English Studies, Sep 1, 2003
Music & Letters, Feb 1, 1996
... have sought to demonstrate that the structural and affective characteristics of this 'mu... more ... have sought to demonstrate that the structural and affective characteristics of this 'musical oration' were directly influenced by the contemporary theory and practice of verbal rhetoric.2 The most extended treatment of this topic has been carried out by Robert Toft, in whose work ...
Medium Aevum, 1996
L'exemple de Salomon montre que les ecrivains du Moyen Age n'hesitaient pas a developper ... more L'exemple de Salomon montre que les ecrivains du Moyen Age n'hesitaient pas a developper avec humour et pragmatisme et a s'ecarter des modeles d'interpretation etablis par les exegetes. Les exemples traites par l'A. montrent que les ecrivains avaient conscience d'un fosse entre les dimensions enigmatique et majesteuse de la legende de Salomon. Des gens comme Chaucer placaient ces caracteristiques au centre de leur oeuvre. D'autres transformaient la legende en roman capable de guerir les blessures de l'histoire pre-chretienne a travers une allegorie spirituelle
Oxford University Press eBooks, Sep 18, 2012
This article focuses on Omnis plantacio, an English sermon that shows how a series of complex rel... more This article focuses on Omnis plantacio, an English sermon that shows how a series of complex relationships were evolving between writing, heresy, and anticlericalism in late medieval England. It discusses the intraclerical critiques contained in the sermon and its relentless castigation of failing clerical ranks. It compares and contrasts the works of several authors including Piers Plowman and some Wycliffite texts, and Thomas Netter and John Audelay.
Disputatio, 2018
No matter whether one consults the B- or C-text of Piers Plowman, the word experience appears onl... more No matter whether one consults the B- or C-text of Piers Plowman, the word experience appears only once, a fact that contrasts provocatively with its significance as a keyword in some studies of the poem. Thus, in the wake of Anne Middleton’s crediting Langland with nothing less than ‘the invention of experience as a literary category’, James Simpson has identified ‘the discourses of experience and morality’ as being fundamental to the poem, and describes the vernacular in which such discourses are fashioned as one whose domain is typically that of ‘the experiential, the new, the contingent’. More recently, Emily Steiner has interpreted the poem’s engagements with logic and rhetoric, intellect and affect as serving the conviction that contraries are ‘the ground of experience’. Emphasizing the word’s medieval association with the gathering of sensory information, Maggie Ross observes that ‘[e]xperience is the way self-consciousness interprets the world’. In this context, no less than the metrical choices of the Gawain-poet, the crammed alliterative lines of Piers Plowman could be described as often insisting on ‘the sheer impact of phenomena on the consciousness to which they are exposed’, thereby furthering the poem’s continuous invitation to experiential engagement. Such engagement is also the main theme of this essay, in which I will show how a thought experiment in Piers Plowman facilitates critical reflection on a fundamental parallel between its revisionist poetics and its representation of the Incarnation as the manifestation of God’s desire to learn about his creation
Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures, 2012
Europe After Wyclif
mong the discursive modes of late-medieval En glish religious writing, "exploratory intellection"... more mong the discursive modes of late-medieval En glish religious writing, "exploratory intellection" of the conceptual density and originality so abundantly exhibited in the writings of Julian of Norwich is a rare phenomenon. 1 But despite this challenge from the primary sources, better justice could still be done to the full range of cognitive and experiential modes of which En glish writers in this period appear to have been aware. 2 Th is essay is accordingly concerned with va ri e ties of intellectual experience-thinking, knowing, the generation of insight, argument and judgment, and even the explicit enjoyment of such mental activities-that persisted in lit er a ture produced in Eng land in the aft ermath of the Wycliffi te controversies. En glish intellectual life during this period can seem many things to the modern scholar: diff use, diverse, intriguing, and diffi cult to bring into focus. 3 But one of the most obvious ways in which Eu rope made its presence felt in En glish religious and intellectual culture aft er Wyclif was through the medium of translation. Even if the sometimes controversial histories of their sources may not always have been known to En glish translators or readers, translations provided routes whereby a rich archive of intellectually engaged texts, comparable in density and ambition to Julian's writings, might be given expression in En glish. 4 A group of texts that exemplify this pro cess, the En glish translations of Guillaume de Deguileville's Pèlerinage de l'âme (1355; hereaft er PA) and of both recensions of his Pèlerinage de la vie humaine (hereaft er PVH1 [1331] and PVH2 [1350s]), appeared during a period of "curiously intimate as well as adversarial contact" between Eng land and France. 5 Th e Pilgrimage of the Sowle (hereaft er Sowle), an anonymous prose translation of PA, was made in 1413. 6 Th e Pilgrimage of the Lyfe of the Manhode (hereaft er Manhode), an