Guest Editors' Introduction: Teaching Medieval Literature off the Grid

Introduction to special issue of the journal Pedagogy: Teaching Medieval Literature off the Gri

What a Difference an M.A. Makes

What is the value of a terminal M.A

Teaching Innocent’s Legacy: Middle English Texts for Commoners

Innocent III's decree requiring annual confession for all Christians led to the production of an astounding number of religious texts--initially, texts meant for priests to use to educate the laity but then also, and increasingly, texts intended for private consumption by the laity. This article explores the place of these texts in English literary history and their value in the classroom

God’s Gluttons: Middle English Devotional Texts, Interiority, and Indulgence

This article offers an analysis of the complex and contradictory nature of lay religious texts produced in England at the turn of the fifteenth century. These works are interesting because they include statements of both encouragement to and anxiety about lay Christians who pursue more singular forms of devotion. I focus on one text in particular, A Ladder of Foure Ronges by the Which Men Mowe Wele Clyme to Heven, a monastic treatise on contemplation translated into Middle English and adapted for a lay audience in the late fourteenth century, as a touchstone for these conflicting positions

Super(Plow)man

This article describes a lesson plan I designed to help students explore the complexity of Piers Plowman’s character both in Langland’s poem and beyond it. The lesson employs Piers’ appearances outside Langland’s text, specifically, in the letters written by participants of the Great Rising of 1381, and compares them to an unlikely parallel: World War II-era comic book covers featuring Superman’s fight against the Axis powers. Piers’ presence in the rebel letters and Superman’s comic book cover war efforts are not strict analogs, but they are provocatively similar instances of iconic fictional characters crossing over into historical events. Considering them together has helped my students see how Piers is not the flat religious character he often seems to them at first, but a rich, multivalent figure—one with a life beyond Langland’s poem

Working Miracles: Seeing Active Supplicants in Marian Miracle Stories

This article expands on recent scholarship which treats miracle stories as not just facile devotional tales but complicated texts worthy of analysis. Specifically, it builds on the claims of scholars who have demonstrated that Mary is characterized in sophisticated ways in miracle stories. Focusing on one text in particular, a Marian miracle most commonly referred to as “The Widow’s Candle,” it makes the case that supplicants, too, are depicted as complex characters, and often in ways that provocatively parallel depictions of Mary

Where Are Medieval Women in Literary Historical Survey Courses?

Medieval women are often misrepresented, or just plain missing, from literary historical survey courses

“Margery and ‘the Juice’: Teaching The Book of Margery Kempe Using OJ Simpson’s If I Did It

This article explores the unlikely parallels between OJ Simpson's sensational confessional memoir If I Did It and The Book of Margery Kempe. Similarities between the two can be productive in the classroom