Clerical Discourse and Lay Audience in Late Medieval England

by Fiona Somerset

Overview

This book investigates how late medieval English writers who translated specialized academic knowledge from Latin into English often projected unprecedented sorts of lay audiences for their writing, and worried about the potential results of making the information they presented more widely available. The well-known concerns with clerical corruption and lay education of authors such as Langland, Trevisa, and Wyclif are linked to those of more obscure writers in both Latin and English, some only recently edited, or only extant in manuscript.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521621540
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	11/05/1998
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature , #37
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.75(d)

Table of Contents

Part I: 1. Introduction; 2. 'Lewed Clergie': vernacular authorisation in Piers Plowman; 3. The 'Publyschyng' of 'Informacion': John Trevisa, Sir Thomas Berkeley, and their project of 'Englysch Translacion'; Part II: 4. Answering the twelve conclusions: Dymmok's halfhearted gestures toward publication; 5. The Upland Series and the invention of invective, 1350–1410; 6. Vernacular Argumentation in The Testimony of William Thorpe.

Editorial Reviews

"Somerset's book provides the tools to push vernacularity studies...to a higher level, to the kind of serious scholarship the topic still needs." Speculum

"Somerset's conclusion [comes] after thoroughly sifting [many] documents" Lawrence V Ryan, Albion

From the Publisher