The Middle Ages at Work

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-vi

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2. Introduction Conceptualizing Labor in the Middle Ages

   1. Introduction Conceptualizing Labor in the Middle Ages

      • Michael Uebel, Kellie Robertson

      Pages 1-15

3. Gender Trouble

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 17-17

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   2. The Idioms of Women’s Work and Thomas Hoccleve’s Travails

      • Catherine Batt

      Pages 19-40

   3. “As If She Were Single”: Working Wives and the Late Medieval English Femme Sole

      • Brian W. Gastle

      Pages 41-64

4. Spiritual Employment

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 65-65

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   2. “The Workman is Worth His Mede”: Poverty, Labor, and Charity in the Sermon of William Taylor

      • Kate Crassons

      Pages 67-90

   3. The Naked and the Dead: The Carpenters’ Company and Lay Spirituality in Late Medieval England

      • Mark Addison Amos

      Pages 91-110

5. Labor and the Law

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 111-111

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   2. Reconstructing English Labor Laws: A Medieval Perspective

      • Anthony Musson

      Pages 113-132

   3. Branding and the Technologies of Labor Regulation

      • Kellie Robertson

      Pages 133-153

6. Producing Poetics

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 155-155

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   2. The Displacement of Labor in Winner and Waster

      • Britton J. Harwood

      Pages 157-177

   3. Scribal Hermeneutics and the Genres of Social Organization in Piers Plowman

      • Andrew Cole

      Pages 179-206

7. Book Work

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 207-207

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   2. Poetic Work and Scribal Labor in Hoccleve and Langland

      • Ethan Knapp

      Pages 209-228

   3. The Erasure of Labor: Hoccleve, Caxton, and the Information Age

      • William Kuskin

      Pages 229-260

8. Back Matter

   Pages 261-267

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This timely volume examines the commitments of historicism in the wake of New Historicism. It contributes to the construction of a materialist historicism while, at the same time, proposing that discussions of work need not be limited to the clash between labour and capital. To this end, the essays offer more than a strictly historical view of the complex terms, social and literary, within which labour was treated in the medieval period. Several of the essays strive to reformulate the very critical language we use to think about the categories of labour and work through a continually doubled engagement with modern theories of labour and medieval theories and practices of labour.

• England
• hermeneutics
• Middle Ages
• reform

"This collection of essays examines a favorite topic of medievalists, breathing new life into its analysis. Robertson and Uebel have achieved something remarkable here. The essays are wide-ranging, innovative, and provocative. Medieval labor is granted a complexity and an expansiveness that readers will likely find inspiring. Consistently engaging, lucidly composed, and full of insight, the work gathered in this important book constitutes essential reading for all those interested in the critical reexamination of the past." - Jeffrey J. Cohen, Department of English, George Washington University

KELLIE ROBERTSON is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, USA.

MICHAEL UEBEL is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Kentucky, USA.

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