Writing and Rebellion
England in 1381
Format:Paperback
Publisher:University of California Press
Published:21st Nov '96
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
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.
- Winner of Modern Language Association Prize for a First Book 1994
ISBN: 9780520206977
Dimensions: 234mm x 156mm x 20mm
Weight: 454g
330 pages