Excrement in the late Middle Ages : sacred filth and Chaucer's fecopoetics / Susan Signe Morrison.

New York : Palgrave Macmillan, [2008], ©2008.

xiii, 271 pages ; 22 cm.

This book examines medieval discourse on excrement.

Introduction -- The medieval body : disciplining material and symbolic excrement -- The rhizomatic body -- Moral filth and the sinning body : hell purgatory, resurrection -- Gendered filth -- Chaucerian fecopoetics -- Urban excrement in The Canterbury tales -- Sacred filth : relics, ritual, and remembering in The prioress's tale -- The excremental human god and redemptive filth : The pardoner's tale -- The rhizomatic pilgrim body and alchemical poetry -- Chaucerian fecology and wasteways : The nun's priest's tale -- Looking behind, looking ahead -- Looking behind -- Waste studies : a brief introduction -- Bottoms up! A manifesto for waste studies.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [225]-250) and index.