Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- List of Tables
- Introduction: Pirates and Pens
- 1 London Middle-Class Writing: The Institutional Bases
- 2 ‘An Inextricable Labyrinth’: The Major Genres of Civic Life
- 3 English Middle-Class Writing in the Earlier Fifteenth Century: The Vernacular Letters
- 4 Women's Letters and Men's Books
- Conclusions and Speculations
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
3 - English Middle-Class Writing in the Earlier Fifteenth Century: The Vernacular Letters
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- List of Tables
- Introduction: Pirates and Pens
- 1 London Middle-Class Writing: The Institutional Bases
- 2 ‘An Inextricable Labyrinth’: The Major Genres of Civic Life
- 3 English Middle-Class Writing in the Earlier Fifteenth Century: The Vernacular Letters
- 4 Women's Letters and Men's Books
- Conclusions and Speculations
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
On the whole, when medieval people wrote, they did not write to relate events to each other. Rather, their proto-capitalist culture demanded that they narrate the circulation of commodities. In other words, they sent each other bills.
Laura Wright, ‘On the Writing of the History of Standard English’.I advise you to beware that ye keep wisely your writings that be of charge that it come not into the hands that may hurt you here after. Your father, whom God assoil, in his trouble[d]season set more by his writings and evidence than he did by any of his moveable goods.
Margaret Past on to her son John.As previous chapters have demonstrated to perhaps an excessive degree, by 1350 at the latest the English middle classes found themselves dealing directly with royal, city, guild and private business documents. By that time, merchant families could likely read (or comprehend) the documents but chose, for a variety of social, legal and technical reasons, not to write them in their own hands. After about 1280 especially, written documents moved apace towards the centre of business life. Like the Sorcerer's Apprentice, the city administration of London increasingly conjured more mandatory documentation from its residents, only to be frustrated by its relentless multiplication piling up in every corner of Guildhall. The merchant class accepted, even welcomed, this change.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Middle-Class Writing in Late Medieval London , pp. 105 - 142Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014