This book is a history of a medieval literary tradition that grew out of opposition to the mendicant fraternal orders. Penn R. Szittya argues that the widespread attacks on the friars in late medieval poetry, especially in Ricardian England, drew on an established tradition that originated in the polemical theology, eschatology, and Biblical exegesis of the friars' ecclesiastical enemies—secular clergy, theologians, polemicists, archbishops, canon lawyers, monks, and rival orders.
Originally published in 1986.
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