Form and Power in Medieval and Early Modern Literature

DANIEL DONOGHUE is Professor of English at Harvard University. His research explores Old English, Middle English, the History of English, Medievalism and Cognitive Literary Studies. SEBASTIAN SOBECKI is Professor of Later Medieval English Literature at the University of Toronto. His research extends to a wide area of late medieval literary culture, especially law, travel, politics, authorship, manuscripts, and palaeography. NICHOLAS WATSON teaches English at Harvard University. His research focuses on medieval English and North European literature, intellectual history, visionary writing and the role of the written vernacular. LAURA ASHE is Professor of English at the University of Oxford and Fellow and Tutor at Worcester College, Oxford. James Simpson teaches English at Harvard University. He publishes on a wide range of topics in on late medieval and early modern Western European Literature.

• List of IllustrationsContributors and EditorsAcknowledgmentsList of AbbreviationsSimpson: An Interim Report - Daniel Donoghue, Sebastian Sobecki, and Nicholas WatsonPart I: The Hermeneutics of Recognition1. The Shock of the Old: Recognition in the Humanities; The 2022 Morton W. Bloomfield Memorial Lecture - James Simpson2. "Stuffed with Divine Words": Undigested Texts in Early Medieval England - Erica Weaver 3. The "Physician's Tale" and Chaucer's Art of Prosopopoeia - Julie Orlemanski 4. "Troilus can afford to fall in love ... with whomsoever he will": Free Will and Recognition in Troilus and Criseyde - Laura AshePart II: Genre and Figure5. Only Rarely Obscure and Not a Genre: Medieval Allegorical Narrative - Nicolette Zeeman6. "Thynke nat the contrary": Field Notes in the Ecology of Medieval Romance - Nicholas Perkins7. Filling in the Lines: Text, Image, and Late Medieval Literary Forms - Jessica Brantley8. Catching at Words: The Literal, the Metaphorical, and the Obvious - Chris BarrettPart III: Culture and Institutions9. Petition, Justice, and Peace in Piers Plowman - Yun Ni10. In Place of the Past: Saint Erkenwald's Versions of Conversion - Aparna Chaudhuri11. Proverb and Satirical Time: The Digby Poems and Their Fifteenth Century - Spencer Strub12. Common Style and the Bourgeois Ethos in John Lydgate's Dietary - Taylor CowderyPart IV: Reformations13. Rewriting Robert the Devil: Thomas Lodge and Medieval Romance - Cathy Shrank 14. Iconoclasm and the Epigraphic Image - Jessica Berenbeim15. The Letter Kills but the Spirit Gives Life (2 Corinthians 3:6): Or, What Happened to Enemy Love? - David Aers16. James Simpson's Freedoms: An Appreciation - Jason CrawfordJames Simpson's Publications from 1984 to 2023BibliographyA Note on the Bloomfield ConferencesGeneral Index

There is a great deal of ground covered here, but that is fitting as tribute to the wide-ranging work of the honoree. Simpson's work has always been so ambitious, exhorting attention to detail even while tracing grand historical narratives. No easy task, but as Simpson has shown us, and as these essays inspired by him demonstrate all over again, one very much worth doing.