1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910819559203321

Autore

Smith D. Vance <1963->

Titolo

The book of the incipit : beginnings in the fourteenth century / / D. Vance Smith

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Minneapolis, Minn., : University of Minnesota Press, c2001

ISBN

0-8166-9258-0

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (316 p.)

Collana

Medieval cultures ; ; v. 28

Disciplina

821/.1

Soggetti

Christian poetry, English (Middle) - History and criticism

English language - Middle English, 1100-1500 - Rhetoric

Openings (Rhetoric)

Rhetoric, Medieval

Incipits

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 261-281) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Contents; Preliminary; Incipit: A Fourteenth-Century Incipit; Initium: Incipits and the Intentions of Vernacular Writing; Exordium: Making Beginnings: Disposition and Inscription; Thema: The Book That Makes Itself; Origo: Genealogy: Engenderment and Digression; Conditora: The Archive of Grammar: Beginning and Documentary Remembrance; Principium: Beginning Perfection: The Theology of Inception; Notes; Bibliography; Index

Sommario/riassunto

In the first book to examine one of the most peculiar features of one of the greatest and most perplexing poems of England's late Middle Ages-the successive attempts of Piers Plowman to begin, and to keep beginning-D. Vance Smith compels us to rethink beginning, as concept and practice, in both medieval and contemporary terms.