Translations of Authority in Medieval English Literature: Valuing the Vernacular by Alastair Minnis

Author: Alastair Minnis 

Title: Translations  of Authority in Middle English Literature

Year: 2009

Citation: Minnis, Alastair. Translations of Authority in Medieval English Literature: Valuing the Vernacular. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

This book is a collection of mostly previously published essays that, as a collection, address the value and status of the “vernacular” in the translation of, and engagement with, authoritative Latin learning. In the introduction to this volume, Minnis identifies and distinctive lack of a vernacular Engligh hermeneutic tradition and asserts that this is largely due to anti-Lollard sentiments. In doing so, Minnis finds that the concept of the vernacular accrues more meaning than simply its reference to a register of language use; the idea of the “vernacular” possesses popular cultural beliefs, values, and references that might challenge or affirm practices and beliefs authorized by state and religious institutions. Minnis hopes to emphasize that the “vernacular” “is far too potent to be strait-jacketed within the narrow sphere of language-transfer. Rather it can, and I believe should, be recognized as encompassing a vast array of acts of cultural transmission and negotiation, deviation and/or synthesis, confrontation and/or reconciliation" (16).

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Valuing the Vernacular

1. Absent Glosses: The Trouble with Middle English Hermeneutics

2. Looking for a Sign: The Quest for Nominalism in Ricardian Poetry

3. Piers's Protean Pardon: Langland on the letter and Spirit of Indulgences

4. Making Bodies: Confection and Conception in Walter Brut's Vernacular Theology

5. Spiritualizing Marriage: Margery Kempe's Allegories of Female Authority

6. Chaucer and the Relics of Vernacular Religion