Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-31T17:54:24.365Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Poetics of Waste: Medieval English Ecocriticism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Eleanor Johnson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Waste has been a recognizable socioeconomic problem since at least the late Middle Ages. In England, because of land and labor shortages, wars, famines, and especially changes in legal and penitential discourses, waste became, by the mid–fourteenth century, a critical concept. But a fully fleshed-out vocabulary for thinking through the meaning and consequences of the practice of committing waste does not yet exist. This essay argues that two fourteenth-century poems, Wynnere and Wastoure and Piers Plowman, address the lack of such a thinking through, tackling the problem of waste in all its vicissitudes. They deploy the formal resources of poetic language—from personification to episodic structure—to draw together the various ideas of waste from other discourses and to raise medieval readers' consciousnesses about the seriousness of waste's consequences. The essay calls their use of formal resources in creating this critical discourse a “poetics of waste.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 127 , Issue 3 , May 2012 , pp. 460 - 476
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 by The Modern Language Association of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Ackerman, Charles. “The Rural Demography of Medieval England.” Ethnohistory 23.2 (1976): 105–15. Print.Google Scholar
Adams, Robert. “Some Versions of Apocalypse: Learned and Popular Eschatology in Piers Plowman.” The Popular Literature of Medieval England. Ed. Heffernan, Thomas J. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1985. 194–236. Print. Tennessee Studies in Lit. 28.Google Scholar
Arnold, Morris S. Introduction. Arnold, Select Cases ix–lxxxv.Google Scholar
Arnold, Morris S., ed. Select Cases of Trespass from the King's Courts, 1307–1399. Vol. 1. London: Selden Soc., 1984. Print. Pubs. of the Selden Soc. 100.Google Scholar
Bennett, J. M., and Hollister, C. W. Medieval Europe: A Short History. New York: McGraw, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Bertz, Douglas. “Prophecy and Apocalypse in Langland's Piers Plowman, B-Text, Passus XVI to XIX.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 84.3 (1985): 313–28. Print.Google Scholar
Biancalana, Joseph. The Fee Tail and the Common Recovery in Medieval England, 1176–1502. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birrell, Jean. “Common Rights in the Medieval Forest: Disputes and Conflicts in the Thirteenth Century.” Past and Present 117.1 (1987): 22–49. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloomfield, Morton. “A Grammatical Approach to Personification Allegory.” Modern Philology 60.3 (1963): 161–71. Print.Google Scholar
Bloomfield, Morton. Piers Plowman as a Fourteenth-Century Apocalypse. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1962. Print.Google Scholar
Bracton, Henry. De Leges et Consuetudinibus Angliae. Ed. Woodbine, George. Trans. Thorne, Samuel E. Vol. 3. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1977. Print. 4 vols. 1968–77.Google Scholar
Burrow, J. A. “Wasting Time, Wasting Words in Piers Plowman B and C.” Yearbook of Langland Studies 17 (2003): 191–202. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cole, Andrew. “Trifunctionality and the Tree of Charity: Literacy and Social Practice in Piers Plowman.” ELH 62.1 (1995): 1–27. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cursor Mundi; or, The Cours o the World: A Northumbrian Poem of the XIVth Century. Ed. R. Morris. 1874. London: Paul, 1893. Print. Early English Text Soc. 57.Google Scholar
Dan Michel's Ayenbite of Inwyt; or, Remorse of Conscience. Ed. Richard Morris. London: Oxford UP, 1965. Print. Early English Text Soc. 23.Google Scholar
Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge, 1966. Print.Google Scholar
Fletcher, Alan J. “The Social Trinity of Piers Plowman.” Review of English Studies 44.175 (1993): 343–61. Print.Google Scholar
Galloway, Andrew. “The Making of a Social Ethic in Late Medieval England: From Gratitudo to Kyndenesse.” Journal of the History of Ideas 55.3 (1994): 365–83. Print.Google Scholar
Giancarlo, Matthew. “Piers Plowman, Parliament, and the Public Voice.” Yearbook of Langland Studies 17 (2003): 135–74. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Griffiths, Lavinia. Personification in Piers Plowman. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985. Print.Google Scholar
Hanna, Ralph. “Will's Work.” Written Work: Langland, Labor, and Authorship. Ed. Justice, Steven and Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1997. 23–66. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harrington, David. “Indeterminacy in Winner and Waster and The Parliament of the Three Ages.” Chaucer Review 20.3 (1986): 246–57. Print.Google Scholar
Heise, Ursula K. “Greening English: Recent Introductions to Ecocriticism.” Rev. of The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination, by Lawrence Buell; Ecocriticism, by Greg Garrardt. Contemporary Literature 47.2 (2006): 289–98. Print.Google Scholar
Heise, Ursula K. Sense of Place and a Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hudson, Anne. “Comment: Senses of Censorship.” Journal of British Studies 46.4 (2007): 758–61. Print.Google Scholar
Justice, Steven. Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381. Berkeley: U of California P, 1994. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karakacili, Eona. “English Agrarian Labor Productivity Rates before the Black Death: A Case Study.” Journal of Economic History 64.1 (2004): 24–60. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn. Reformist Apocalypticism and Piers Plowman. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn. “Response: Books under Suspicion, and Beyond.” Journal of British Studies 46.4 (2007): 766–73. Print.Google Scholar
Langland, William. Plowman, Piers, A-Version. Piers Plowman: A Parallel-Text Edition of the A, B, C, and Z Versions. Ed. Schmidt, A. V. C. 2 vols. New York: Longman, 1995. Print.Google Scholar
Lawton, David. “Lollardy and ‘The Piers Plowman Tradition.‘” Modern Language Review 76.4 (1981): 780–93. Print.Google Scholar
Carta, Magna. Statutes 22–25.Google Scholar
McKechnie, William John. Magna Carta: A Commentary on the Great Charter of King John, with an Historical Introduction. Glasgow: Maclehose, 1914. Print.Google Scholar
Middleton, Anne. “Acts of Vagrancy: The C-text ‘Autobiography’ and the Statute of 1388.” Written Work: Langland, Labor, and Authorship. Ed. Justice, Steven and Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1997. 208–317. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Middleton, Anne. “Narration and the Invention of Experience: Episodic Form in Piers Plowman.” The Wisdom of Poetry: Essays in Honor of Morton Bloomfield. Ed. Benson, Larry and Wenzel, Siegfried. Kalamazoo: Medieval Inst. Pubs., 1982. 91–122. Print.Google Scholar
Milsom, S. F. C. A Natural History of the Common Law. New York: Columbia UP, 2003. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milsom, S. F. C., and Shanks, Elsie. “Legal Introduction.” Novae Narrationes. Ed. Milsom, and Shanks, . London: Quaritch, 1963. xxv–ccxiv. Print. Pubs. of the Selden Soc. 80.Google Scholar
Nolan, Maura. “‘With Tresone Within’: Wynnere and Wastoure, Chivalric Self-Representation and the Law.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 26.1 (1996): 1–28. Print.Google Scholar
Paxson, James. The Poetics of Personification. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plucknett, T. F. T. The Legislation of Edward I. London: Cambridge UP, 1949. Print.Google Scholar
Plucknett, T. F. T. Statutes and Their Interpretation in the Fourteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1922. Print.Google Scholar
“Poiesis.” Oxford English Dictionary. 3rd ed. 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Rackham, Oliver. The History of the Countryside. London: Dent, 1986. Print.Google Scholar
Schlauch, Margaret. “The Revolt of 1381 in England.” Science and Society 4.4 (1940): 414–32. Print.Google Scholar
Simpson, A. W. B. A History of the Common Law of Contract. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1975. Print.Google Scholar
Statute of Gloucester. Statutes 45–50.Google Scholar
Statute of Merton. Statutes 1–4.Google Scholar
Statute of Westminster. Statutes 71–95.Google Scholar
Statutes of the Realm (1215–1713). Vol. 1. London: Eyre, 1810. Print. 11 vols. 1810–28.Google Scholar
Stoekl, Alan. Bataille's Peak: Energy, Religion, and Postsustainability. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2007. Print.Google Scholar
Trigg, Stephanie. Introduction. Wynnere and Wastoure and The Parlement of the Thre Ages. Ed. Trigg. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990. xiii–lii. Print. Early English Text Soc. 297.Google Scholar
Turville-Petre, Thorlac. The Alliterative Revival. Cambridge: Brewer, 1977. Print.Google Scholar
“Vastitas.” Latin-English Dictionary. Ed. Smith, William and Lockwood, John. Edinburgh: Chambers, 1999. Print.Google Scholar
“Vasto.” Latin-English Dictionary. Ed. Smith, William and Lockwood, John. Edinburgh: Chambers, 1999. Print.Google Scholar
“Waste.” Middle English Dictionary. Regents of the U of Michigan, 18 Dec. 2001. Web. 5 Jan. 2010.Google Scholar
“Wasten.” Middle English Dictionary. Regents of the U of Michigan, 18 Dec. 2001. Web. 5 Jan. 2010.Google Scholar
White, Lynn. “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis.” Science 155.3767 (1967): 1203–07. Print.Google Scholar
Wynnere and Wastoure. Wynnere and Wastoure and The Parlement of the Thre Ages. Ed. Warren Ginsberg. Kalamazoo: TEAMS, 1992. 13–42. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yaeger, Patricia. “Editor's Column: Sea Trash, Dark Pools, and the Tragedy of the Commons.” PMLA 125.3 (2010): 523–45. Print.Google Scholar