ENGLISH

Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381

By Steven Justice

Book information

Publisher
University of California Press
Year
2023
ISBN
9780520918405
DOI
10.1525/9780520918405
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
16 MB (17072121 bytes)
Series
The New Historicism: Studies in Cultural Poetics; 27
Edition
Reprint 2019
Pages
330\305
Time added
2023-08-15 03:43:32

Description

In this compelling account of the "peasants' revolt" of 1381, in which rebels burned hundreds of official archives and attacked other symbols of authority, Steven Justice demonstrates that the rebellion was not an uncontrolled, inarticulate explosion of peasant resentment but an informed and tactical claim to literacy and rule.Focusing on six brief, enigmatic texts written by the rebels themselves, Justice places the English peasantry within a public discourse from which historians, both medieval and modern, have thus far excluded them. He recreates the imaginative world of medieval villagers—how they worked and governed themselves, how they used official communications in unofficial ways, and how they produced a disciplined insurgent ideology.

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