IMC 2011: Sessions
Session 1116: Wealth and Excess in William Langland's Piers Plowman
Wednesday 13 July 2011, 11.15-12.45
Sponsor: | International Piers Plowman Society |
---|---|
Organiser: | Isabel Davis, Department of English & Humanities, Birkbeck, University of London |
Moderator/Chair: | Isabel Davis, Department of English & Humanities, Birkbeck, University of London |
Paper 1116-a | 'Gnawen God with the Gorge' (B.10.57): The Ethics of Excess and the Limits of Imagination (Language: English) Index terms: Economics - General, Language and Literature - Middle English, Lay Piety |
Paper 1116-b | Conspicuous Consumption: Displays of Excess and the Exercise of Charity in the Piers Plowman Dining Halls (Language: English) Index terms: Economics - General, Language and Literature - Middle English, Lay Piety |
Paper 1116-c | Excess and Poverty: Langland's Regraters and Civic Legislation (Language: English) Index terms: Economics - Trade, Language and Literature - Middle English, Political Thought |
Abstract | In 2010 the International Piers Plowman Society sponsored a session at Leeds on the theme of poverty. In 2011 we turn our attention to excess and wealth to fit with the conference's theme of 'Poor / Rich'. The Middle English poem, Piers Plowman, has a great deal to say about superfluity and gratuity and it is, itself, an abundant work. In what way is richness legitimized or censured by the poem? In what ways should copiousness be managed? What place is there for wealth in the poem's assessment of Christian ethics and theology? |