The Clerical Proletariat and the Resurgence of Medieval English Poetry

In 1400, despite the great literary achievements of Chaucer, Langland, and the Pearl Poet, Ricardian English books were still a niche market. However, the generation of clerical proletariat, who lived and worked in liminal spaces between the ecclesiastical and lay world, found new material and new audiences for poetry in English, leading to the resurgence of English writing. Kerby-Fulton's study reveals that these thirteenth-century writers were preoccupied with underemployment, patronage, careerist ambition, alienation, and changing literary fashion, and were choosing the more avant-garde option of writing in English while feeling backwards to earlier tradition.

Format: Hardback
Length: 432 pages
Publication date: 28 May 2021
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

In the vibrant literary landscape of 1400, despite the remarkable achievements of Chaucer, Langland, and the Pearl Poet, the realm of Ricardian English books remained a niche market. However, as Kathryn Kerby-Fulton reveals, their generation played a transformative role in nurturing the resurgence of English writing. This resurgence was partly fueled by the mass underemployment of clerks, originally trained for the church but unable to secure steady positions within it. These clerical proletarians found themselves occupying liminal spaces between the ecclesiastical and lay worlds, where they sought new avenues for artistic expression. It was within these marginal spaces that the most innovative and entrepreneurial minds discovered fresh material and receptive audiences for poetry in English.

Prior to 1380, English book production in London was scarce, making Kerby-Fulton's study of the preceding century particularly insightful. She delves into the early experimentation of regional poets with a novel poetics of vocational crisis. These thirteenth-century writers, preoccupied with underemployment, patronage, careerist ambitions, alienation, and shifting literary fashions, chose to write in English while simultaneously feeling a sense of reverence for earlier traditions. Works such as Laȝamon's Brut and The Owl and the Nightingale exemplify this blend of avant-garde experimentation and a nod to historical precedents.

Kerby-Fulton's groundbreaking work is the first to explore Langland's legacy of articulating an authorial employment crisis, which echoed in the works of Hoccleve and Audelay. Furthermore, she employs innovative tools to uncover proletarian writers in unattributed Middle English works, including the famous Harley 2253 lyrics and the York Realist's Second. Through her meticulous research, Kerby-Fulton sheds light on the hidden voices of these marginalized writers, contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of the literary landscape of 1400 and the enduring influence of Ricardian English books on the development of English literature.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780812252637