The Weight of Comparing in Medieval England

It is possible that comparison might be everywhere in history, but we might also suppose that comparing might matter less in some moments and places than others. Especially given the sense that there is something distinctive and powerful about comparison in contemporary life, it is important to try to get a sense for the range, variety, and importance of modes of comparison in other times and places. In this chapter, I inquire into the place and weight of comparative thinking in England in the later medieval period. It is not an easy task, because the definition of the comparative and