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Author Matthews, David, 1963-

Title Writing to the king : nation, kingship, and literature in England, 1250-1350 / David Matthews
Published Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2010
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Description 1 online resource (xv, 221 pages)
Series Cambridge studies in medieval literature ; 77
Cambridge studies in medieval literature ; 77.
Contents Introduction -- Defending Anglia -- Attacking Scotland : Edward I and the 1290s -- Regime change -- The destruction of England : crisis and complaint c.1300-41 -- Love letters to Edward III -- Envoy -- Appendix. The tail-rhyme poems of Langtoft's chronicle
Summary 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
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 205-216) and index
Subject Political poetry, English (Middle) -- History and criticism
Politics and literature -- England -- History -- To 1500
Literature and history -- England
Letter writing in literature.
Kings and rulers in literature.
POETRY -- English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh.
Kings and rulers in literature
Letter writing in literature
Literature and history
Political poetry, English (Middle)
Politics and government -- Historiography
Politics and literature
SUBJECT Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1066-1485 -- Historiography
Subject England
Great Britain
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780511676840
0511676840
9780511676079
0511676077