Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381

Abstract

STEVEN JUSTICE, Writing REVIEWS and Rebellion: England in 1381 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: U n i v . o f California Press, 1994), 289 pp. The records o f the Peasants' R e v o l t o f 1381—especially the six brief letters usually ascribed t o J o h n Ball—have been the site o f several recent explorations b y l i t e r a r y historians i n t o t e r r i t o r y outside the canon o f later medieval English literature. T w o o f these essays ap­ peared o n l y as Steven Justice's m o r e ambitious pursuit was at an advanced stage; but, o d d l y enough, he was able to respond t o t h e m i n a review before his b o o k was published. I n this review, he com­ plains that such forays often t u r n o u t t o be pretenses for demonstrat­ ing f r o m a new angle the achievements o f the great poets. H e praises, on the other hand, essays that use o l d , philological methods to suggest roads that a really historical study o f literature m i g h t take (791). H i s o w n m o s t l y rewarding j o u r n e y o n these roads yields compelling views o f the texts and events o f 1381 f r o m the perspective of the peasants themselves, b u t also shows h o w tenuous the results can be o f reading b o l d l y b e h i n d the presumed intentions o f those w h o made the records. Justice's fundamental hypothesis is t o credit the rebels with exactly w h a t w r i t e r s b o t h t h e n and n o w have denied t h e m : coherent perspective and intentions. H e invites us t o take the b o o k as a t h o u g h t experiment: w h a t m i g h t the rising l o o k like i f w e resist infection f r o m the panic o f the chroniclers and assume a m a x i m u m (rather than the customary m i n i m u m ) o f discipline, consistency, purpose, and i n f o r m a t i o n o n the part o f those w h o made it? (10). Reconstructing the intentions o f the rebels f r o m documents made b y their persecutors, however, requires first reconstructing the perspec­ tive o f the persecutors as a guide t o w h a t these w r i t e r s were, and m o r e i m p o r t a n t l y were n o t , able t o see and, hence, h o w slips i n their records m i g h t reveal t o us w h a t they d i d n o t intend t o show. F o r this project o f reading past the sources Justice r i g h t l y claims the usefulness o f o l d , empirical disciplines i n reconstituting b o t h new and familiar texts (7), and he puts t h e m t o judicious use. Justice p r i n c i p a l l y reconstitutes the six brief texts transcribed i n M i d d l e English b y t w o chroniclers—five b y H e n r y K n i g h t o n and one Richard Firth Green, John Ball's Letters: Literary History and Historical Litera­ ture, 176-200, and Susan Crane, The Writing Lesson of 1381, 201-21 in Chaucer's England: Literature in Historical Context, ed. Barbara Hanawalt, Medieval Studies at Minnesota 4, Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1992; reviewed in Speculum 69, no. 3 Quly 1994): 790-2.

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