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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)
Louise M. Bishop, Clark Honors College, University of Oregon
Index terms: Economics - General, Language and Literature - Middle English, Lay Piety
Paper 1116-bConspicuous Consumption: Displays of Excess and the Exercise of Charity in the Piers Plowman Dining Halls
(Language: English)
Alastair Bennett, Department of English & Language Studies, Canterbury Christ Church University
Index terms: Economics - General, Language and Literature - Middle English, Lay Piety
Paper 1116-cExcess and Poverty: Langland's Regraters and Civic Legislation
(Language: English)
Michael Rodman Jones, School of English, University of Nottingham
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?