{"product_id":"laughter-and-awkwardness-in-late-david-watt-9781350375024","title":"Laughter and Awkwardness in Late Medieval England: Social Discomfort in the Literature of the Middle Ages","description":"\u003cp\u003e'We live, ' according to Adam Kotsko, 'in an awkward age.' While this condition may present some challenges, it may also help us to be more attuned to awkwardness in other ages. This book pairs medieval texts with twenty-first century films or television programmes to explore what the resonance between them can tell us about living together in an awkward age. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e In this nuanced and engaging study, David Watt focuses especially, but not exclusively, on the 15th century, which seems to intervene awkwardly in the literary trajectory between Chaucer and the Renaissance. This book's hypothesis is that the social discomfort depicted and engendered by writers as diverse as Thomas Hoccleve, Margery Kempe, and Sir Thomas Malory is a feature rather than a flaw. \u003ci\u003eLaughter and Awkwardness in Late Medieval England \u003c\/i\u003eexplains that these authors have a great deal in common with other fifteenth-century authors, who generated embodied experiences of social discomfort in a range of genres by adopting and adapting literary techniques used by their predecessors and successors in slightly different ways. Like the twenty-first century texts with which they are paired, the late-medieval texts that feature in this book use the relationship between laughter and awkwardness to ask what it means to live with each other and how we can learn to live with ourselves.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e David Watt\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 1350375020\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781350375024\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Bloomsbury Academic\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 03\/20\/2025\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 208\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.66lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.44d","brand":"David Watt","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":48484969644287,"sku":"9781350375024","price":39.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_e96c51af-c67d-4b86-92ff-a3a16ff59a3f.jpg?v=1778047042","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/laughter-and-awkwardness-in-late-david-watt-9781350375024","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}