Writing to the King
Nation, Kingship and Literature in England, 1250–1350

This book is a study of the literature apparently addressed to the monarch in medieval England.

David Matthews (Author)

9781107412545, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 3 January 2013

242 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm, 0.33 kg

'Writing to the King is a valuable contribution, challenging the usual periodizations, and constructing a coherent narrative of ideological development over the century, across some interesting writings which have hitherto suffered from relative neglect.' Laura Ashe, Medium Aevum

In the century before Chaucer a new language of political critique emerged. In political verse of the period, composed in Anglo-Latin, Anglo-Norman, and Middle English, poets write as if addressing the king himself, drawing on their sense of the rights granted by Magna Carta. These apparent appeals to the sovereign increase with the development of parliament in the late thirteenth century and the emergence of the common petition, and become prominent, in an increasingly sophisticated literature, during the political crises of the early fourteenth century. However, very little of this writing was truly directed to the king. As David Matthews shows in this book, the form of address was a rhetorical stance revealing much about the position from which writers were composing, the audiences they wished to reach, and their construction of political and national subjects.

Preface
Introduction: writing to the King
1. Defending Anglia
2. Attacking Scotland: Edward I and the 1290s
3. Regime change
4. The destruction of England: crisis and complaint c.1300–41
5. Love letters to Edward III
Envoy.

Subject Areas: Literature: history & criticism [DS], Literature & literary studies [D], Language: history & general works [CBX]