{"product_id":"book-of-the-incipit-d-vance-smith-9780816637607","title":"Book of the Incipit: Beginnings in the Fourteenth Century Volume 28","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003eAn intriguing evaluation of the concept of beginnings in the medieval period.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMedieval Studies\/Literary Theory\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAn intriguing evaluation of the concept of beginnings in the medieval period. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn 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.\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe problem of beginning was invested with increasing urgency in the fourteenth century, imagined and grappled with in the courts, the churches, the universities, the workshops, the fields, and the streets of England. The Book of the Incipit reveals how Langland's poem exemplifies a widespread interest in beginning in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, an interest that appears in such divergent fields as the physics of motion, the measurement of time, logic, grammar, rhetoric, theology, book production, and insurrection. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eSmith offers a theoretical understanding of beginning that departs from the structuralisms of Edward Said and the traditional formalisms of A. D. Nuttall and most medievalist and modernist treatments of closure. Instead, he conceives a work's beginning as a figure of the beginning of the work itself, the inception of language as the problem of beginning to which we continue to return.\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eISBN 0-8166-3760-1 Cloth\/jacket  24.50 $34.95x\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e296 Pages 5 7\/8 x 9 May\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eMedieval Cultures Series, volume 28\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eTranslation Inquiries: University of Minnesota Press\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e D. Vance Smith\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0816637601\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780816637607\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Minnesota Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 05\/01\/2001\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 320\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.21lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.26h x 6.36w x 0.90d","brand":"D. Vance Smith","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":49096752201983,"sku":"9780816637607","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/book-of-the-incipit-d-vance-smith-9780816637607","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}