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| Additional Physical Format: | Online version: Johnson, Barbara A. Reading Piers Plowman and The pilgrim's progress. Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press, c1992 (OCoLC)645831703 |
|---|---|
| Named Person: | William Langland; John Bunyan; William Langland; John Bunyan; William Langland; John Bunyan |
| Material Type: | Government publication, State or province government publication |
| Document Type: | Book |
| All Authors / Contributors: |
Barbara A Johnson |
| ISBN: | 0809316536 9780809316533 |
| OCLC Number: | 24373047 |
| Description: | x, 318 p. ; 23 cm. |
| Responsibility: | Barbara A. Johnson. |
| More information: |
Abstract:
Centering her discussion on two historical "ways of reading" - which she calls the Protestant and the lettered - Barbara A. Johnson traces the development of a Protestant readership as it is reflected in the reception of Langland's Piers Plowman and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Informed by reader-response and reception theory and literacy and cultural studies, Johnson's ambitious examination of these two ostensibly literary texts charts the cultural roles they played in the centuries following their composition, roles far more important than their modern critical reputations can explain. The reception of these two works, revealing as it does changing ideas concerning the nature and status of books as well as the stature of authors, documents the means by which a culture shapes and is shaped by texts. Johnson argues that much more evidence exists about how earlier readers read than has hitherto been acknowledged. The reception of Piers Plowman, for example, can be inferred from references to the work, the apparatus its Renaissance printer inserted in his editions, the marginal comments readers inscribed both in printed editions and in manuscripts, and the apocryphal "plowman" texts that constitute interpretations of Langland's poem. Conditioned more by religious, historical, and economic forces than literary concerns, Langland's poem became a part of the reformist tradition that culminated in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. By understanding this tradition, Bunyan's place in it, and the way the reception of The Pilgrim's Progress illustrates the beginning of a new more realistic fictional tradition, Johnson concludes, we can begin to delineate a more accurate history of the ways literature and society intersect, a history of readers reading.
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Related Subjects:(16)
- Langland, William, -- 1330?-1400? -- Piers Plowman.
- Bunyan, John, -- 1628-1688. -- Pilgrim's progress.
- Christian literature, English -- History and criticism.
- Christian pilgrims and pilgrimages in literature.
- Protestants -- Books and reading -- England.
- Puritan movements in literature.
- Protestantism and literature.
- Reader-response criticism.
- Langland, William, -- ca 1330-ca 1400. -- Piers the Ploughman.
- Protestants -- Angleterre -- Livres et lecture.
- Protestantisme et littérature.
- Esthétique de la réception.
- Langland, William -- Piers Plowman
- Bunyan, John -- The pilgrim's progress
- Protestantismus
- Leser

