Stubbs, Shakespeare, and Recent Historians of Richard II

1976 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Theilmann
Keyword(s):  
William Shakespeare ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Richard Ii ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Late Medieval England ◽  
The Middle Ages

Richard II, one of the most puzzling kings of late medieval England, has been the subject of controversy ever since his forced abdication in 1399. He often has been portrayed as a tyrant or, at times, as a madman by historians. Recently the trend is toward a reassessment of Richard's reign free from the biased Whig interpretation of the past. R. H. Jones took a first step in that direction in 1968 with the publication of The Royal Policy of Richard II: Absolutism in the Middle Ages. Jones viewed Richard as a king inclined toward absolutism but lacking the taint of rancorousness or despotism ascribed to him by historians since Stubbs. Subsequently two books, a Festschrift, and several articles have appeared, delineating more aspects of the reign. Since May McKisack's volume in the Oxford History of England series appeared in 1959, the number of works concerning the reign has been steadily growing. The recent publication of Anthony Tuck's Richard II and the English Nobility offers an opportunity to reexamine the place of Richard II in history. The divergence of scholarship since 1959 from the traditional interpretations will be seen as the major constitutional problems of the reign are scrutinized. After first examining the influence of William Shakespeare and William Stubbs in shaping the historiography of the reign a chronological discussion of the period from 1377 to 1399 will follow.

The Coronation in Medieval England: The Evolution of the Office and the Oath

Traditio ◽  
1960 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 111-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. G. Richardson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Middle Ages

An explanatory foreword seems to be demanded by the studies in the English coronation ceremony here presented. I am conscious that on a number of points, views are now put forward incompatible with those I have expressed on other occasions since first I began to write on the subject. Further scrutiny of the evidence and the redating of some of the more important documents have, however, led me inevitably to conclusions at variance not only with those of other scholars, but with some that seemed plausible to me at the time of writing. What is principally in question is the history of the English coronation before 1308; but I have revised and elaborated the story of the evolution of the Fourth Recension of the English coronation office as it was presented by Professor Sayles and myself a good many years ago. It would be presumptuous on my part to pretend that I have given final answers to the many questions the tangled history of the English coronation provokes. I have changed my own mind too often to permit me to imagine that there may not be answers to those questions more satisfying than mine. But what I have written will, I trust, advance the study of obscure and complicated problems which have an important bearing upon the history of kingship in the Middle Ages and therefore upon medieval polity.

The Staging of the Chester Cycle: An Alternate Theory

1971 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonard Powlick
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Religious Drama ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Middle Ages

The past fifteen years have been a period of active revisionism in the study of the stage history of medieval England. Through the efforts of Richard Southern, Martial Rose, and others, we have gained a quite different perspective on the staging of the religious drama of the Middle Ages. Now the Cornish plays are no longer considered to be an aberration, for we have seen the principle of stationary performance extended to Wakefield and Lincoln, and enough questions have been raised concerning performance in York that processional staging even there seems doubtful. More and more we are being led to the conclusion that not processional staging on pageant carts, but stationary performance was the norm in England, just as it was on the Continent.

The Medieval Literary Beyond Form, ed. Robert J. Meyer-Lee and Catherine Sanok. Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. s. Brewer, 2018, xii, 276 pp., 30 b/w ill.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 337-339
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Late Medieval England ◽  
The Middle Ages

We can always use critical studies that question both what constitutes a literary text in the Middle Ages and what form those texts have, as is the case with the essays collected by Robert J. Meyer-Lee and Catherine Sanok. They define form as “a historically contingent set of attributes defining privileged texts as literature so that the latter may serve particular social, economic, and political interests” (4). They hasten, however, and quite correctly, to warn us about the difficulty in being overly specific in light of the contingency of such formal criteria, which might undermine the entire effort here to some extent, even though they then emphasize again that the articles “meditate upon the question of the relation between form and the literary” (6), as it manifested itself in medieval and late medieval England, which is supposed to be the exclusive terrain covered here, thought that is not always true. Taking us back to this deliberate (?) seesaw, they then return to highlight that in the pre-modern world the differences between literary and non-literary were rather fluid (8). What might then be the focus of this book? The sub-heading of the book itself leaves us a bit puzzled: “Beyond Form,” so why does the introduction then highlight formality issues so centrally?

Holy Maydens, Holy Wyfes: the Cult of Women Saints in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-century England

1990 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 175-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eamon Duffy
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Women Saints ◽  
John The Baptist ◽  
Late Medieval England ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
The Middle Ages

The cult of the saints, according to Emile Male, ‘sheds over all the centuries of the middle ages its poetic enchantment’, but ‘it may well be that the saints were never better loved than during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries’ Certainly their images and shrines were everywhere in late medieval England. They filled the churches, gazing down in polychrome glory from altar-piece and bracket, from windows and tilt-tabernacles. In 1488 the little Norfolk church of Stratton Strawless had lamps burning not only before the Rood with Mary and John, and an image of the Trinity, but before a separate statue of the Virgin, and images of Saints Margaret, Anne, Nicholas, John the Baptist, Thomas à Becket, Christopher, Erasmus, James the Great, Katherine, Petronilla, Sitha, and Michael the Archangel.

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