Death and Purgatory: Middle English Didactic Poetry.(Review)

TAKAMI MATSUDA. Pp. x + 278. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997. [pounds]35.00 (ISBN 0-85991-507-7).

Dr Matsuda begins his thematic study by reporting Le Goff's much contested view that purgatory 'was born' in the later twelfth century and then surveys what Christian writers before that period had to say about an intermediate state after death in which souls were cleansed of their sins and prepared for heaven. His next three chapters examine the appearance of purgatory in a variety of literary works. First, in chapter two, Matsuda discusses Latin visions of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and then Middle English visionary texts of the following two centuries. This is …