Writing and Rebellion (Steven Justice)

This is actually interesting: Justice begins with the presentation of five short texts from Henry Knighton’s chronicle account of the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt--three addresses labeled as “speeches” and two as “letters”. However, all are in an epistolary form. The difference? The first three are attributed to commons (Jack Milner, Jack Carter, and Jack Trueman) while the last two are attributed to John Ball, a cleric co-conspirator. Justice’s explanation: that Knighton could not conceive of peasant literacy, and so assumed that Milner, Carter, and Trueman’s messages were oral, not written.

This is, in Justice’s opinion, evidence of a blindspot in Knighton’s conventional ideology--a blindspot that leads him to reveal a truth he would have been loath to accept: a literate culture among the commons. (That Langland did accept peasant literacy is evidenced, Justice claims, by his post-revolt revisions.) Written culture was, ostensibly, the realm of nobles and (especially) clerks. However, commons understood the power of writing, even if not all could actually read and write fluently. They experienced the control of themselves and their property that legal documents embodied, and they recognized the authority latent in royal decrees. For this reason they attacked the existing regime by destroying tax rolls and land records, and echoed decretive language in their letters (“Jak trewman doth yow to understande…”).

However, this literacy centered in legal and executive documents made them ill-equipped as readers to cope with theological discourse and poetry, which do not issue a summons to action. Two cases in point: Wyclif’s denouncement of clerical wealth, an appeal for the king to divest the church of its lands, was taken as authorization for direct action, while Langland’s similar discussion of what ought to be in the church and society became marching orders to right the wrongs. Justice identifies this tendency to move from speculation to execution with John Ball in particular, but the literature peasantry generally as well.