Medieval Conduct

What do books on how to behave tell us about society during the Middle Ages?

Focusing on a broad range of texts from England, France, Germany, and Italy--conduct and courtesy books, advice poems, devotional literature, trial records--the contributors to Medieval Conduct draw attention to the diverse ways in which readers of this literature could interpret such behavioral guides, appropriating them to their own ends.

Medieval Conduct expands the concept of conduct to include historicized practices, and theorizes the connection between texts and their concrete social uses; what emerges is a nuanced interpretation of the role of gender and class inscribed in such texts. By bringing to light these subtleties and complexities, the authors also reveal the ways in which the assumptions of literary history have shaped our reception of such texts in the past two centuries.

Contributors: Mark Addison Amos, Southern Illinois U; Anna Dronzek, U of Minnesota, Morris; Roberta L. Krueger, Hamilton College; Ruth Nissé, U of Nebraska-Lincoln; Ann Marie Rasmussen, Duke U; Jennifer Fisk Rondeau, U of Oregon; and Claire Sponsler, U of Iowa.

Kathleen Ashley is professor of English at the University of Southern Maine. Robert L. A. Clark is associate professor of French at Kansas State University.