Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-vpsfw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-21T20:51:31.137Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Introduction

from V - BEFORE THE REFORMATION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

David Wallace
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
Get access

Summary

This section begins and ends with paired chapters on dynasties (Lancastrians, Tudors) established more by force of arms than by claims of birthright. Use of force crucially threatens to expose aspiring or usurping monarchs as mere magnates among magnates; such perceptions need to be rapidly foreclosed through self-legitimating or diversionary practices at court (chapters 24, 30), at church (25, 31), or in outward-focused territorial expansionism. Processes of Englishing, vigorously pursued throughout the fourteenth century, assume increasing importance as English monarchs identify themselves ever more closely with the English tongue. Expanded popular access to English texts, however, leads secular and religious authorities to worry about who might be reading what to whom, and to what end; the spread of print culture frustrates attempts at centralized regulation of reading by class, gender and location. William Caxton (chapter 27) astutely balances the pleasing of putative royal patrons against the more certain demands of a broader market. Guild-sponsored drama in the north calibrates increasing degrees of independence from ecclesiastical and aristocratic dominance; drama in the south and east concerns itself more straightforwardly with turning a profit (chapter 28). Covetousness, the most dangerous vice of earlier allegorical drama, is later supplanted as villain-in-chief by old-feudal aristocratic Pride; the newly enterprising individual, busily fleeing idleness, comes to triumph over pretensions of birth (chapter 29). Compilers of late romance offer models of courtesy, etiquette, letter-writing and artes militari that might please merchant and gentry audiences as well as aristocratic patrons (chapter 26). The struggles of magnates to monarchize themselves do, then, draw poetry and prose of singular intensity from those caught up in, or forcibly excluded from, processes of dynastic fabrication. All the while, however, more commercially minded models of writing, publishing and performance steadily advance into every corner of English life. Some of these corners lie far from Westminster.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Introduction
  • Edited by David Wallace, University of Pennsylvania
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature
  • Online publication: 28 March 2008
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521444200.029
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Introduction
  • Edited by David Wallace, University of Pennsylvania
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature
  • Online publication: 28 March 2008
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521444200.029
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Edited by David Wallace, University of Pennsylvania
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature
  • Online publication: 28 March 2008
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521444200.029
Available formats
×