Medieval Allegory as Epistemology

Marco Nievergelt studied at the Universities of Lausanne, Glasgow, and Oxford. His research interests lie in English and comparative literature, cultural history, and intellectual history in the late medieval period (c. 1200-1600). His research specializations include allegorical poetry, the relations between medieval literature and philosophy, chivalric literature and romance, Anglo-French cultural and literary relations, and medieval translation. He is currently a Marie Curie Post-Doctoral Fellow at the EPHE/PSL in Paris, working on a research project on the Science, Philosophy, and Poetics of Experience in Late Medieval England (SPPELME). He has previously taught at the Universities of Warwick, Geneva, and Lausanne, and held fellowships from the Swiss Science Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Paris, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

• IntroductionI. Jean de Meun1: In the Beginning was the RoseII. DeguilevilleIntroduction to Part II2: Language3: Cognition: Theory and Practice4: ExperienceIII. LanglandIntroduction to Part III5: The Desire for Knowledge and the Experience of Conversion6: The Experience of Failure and the Architecture of Vision7: The Ends of Experience: Incarnation and Apocalypse

Nievergelt's book is long, challenging, and deeplyrewarding. Whatever position readers might take on the many arresting arguments advanced here, anyone who reads Medieval Allegory as Epistemologycannot fail to be convinced of the intellectual richness of the Rose, the dynamism and interest of Deguileville's writing, and the huge importance of these works for understanding the cultural landscape that Langland inhabited.