Competing Archives, Competing Histories
French and Its Cultural Locations in Late-Medieval England
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10776830 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kathryn Kerby-Fulton (University of Notre Dame, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 90 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 674-700 |
| Publication date | 2015-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Speculum (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0038-7134 • E-ISSN: 2040-8072 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0038713415001451 |
| OpenAlex | W2216136881 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 12 |
In his seminal article, “Thinking English Law in French: The Angevins and the Common Law,” Paul Hyams examines the surprising number of lasting legal terms “that started life as French words” and argues “that so much Frenchness indicates that more of the crucially experimental but constructive thinking behind the early Common Law than I had previously imagined may have originated not in Latin, still less in English, but in the French language.” This is striking, I think, because experimental or creative thought is not often enough attributed to legal clerks, civil servants, or scribes in any language or century. I have been interested in “office creativity” because many late-medieval writers were bureaucrats by day and “moonlighted” as literary authors or scribes after hours: cases such as Geoffrey Chaucer's, Thomas Usk's, Thomas Hoccleve's, John Audelay's, and, from internal evidence, likely William Langland's, are already well known. Contributing to this ferment, though more rarely identifiable, are the members of the “clerical proletariat” who also migrated to offices: the army of the underemployed, originally trained for the medieval church but not able to attain benefices in it (Hoccleve himself being among the identifiable). Whether by choice or destiny, many well-trained, intelligent men ended up working in the trilingual world of the writing offices, preparing documents using Latin, “law French,” and increasingly English, advising in royal, civic, parliamentary, noble household, or ecclesiastical administration. With their clerical skills, well-educated office employees (to which we can add “king's clerks,” notaries, attorneys, and household secretaries) were often not just copying but drafting, creating or intervening in texts and affairs with skill and agenda. For late-medieval Westminster several scholarly studies have traced bureaucrats, “second-career” proletarians, king's clerks, and various members of the noncelibate clericus class in their roles as literary authors or book artisans
Art · Constructive · Creativity · Destiny (ISS module · Literature · Political science · Sociology · Classics · Historical Studies of British Isles · History · Law · Medieval and Early Modern Justice · Medieval Literature and History
Theories of the Archive from Across the Disciplines
Parliamentary Texts of the Later Middle Ages
The space of memory
Careers and Disappointments in the Late-Medieval Church
The Purpose of the English Modus Tenendi Parliamenturn
The Use of English
Factions, feuds and noble power in the lordship of Ireland, c . 1356–1496
Historiographical debate
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,43 |
| Citation span | 2019 - 2026 (8) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |