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In this compelling account of the "peasants' revolt" of 1381, in which rebels burned hundreds of official archives and attacked other symbols of authority, Steven Justice demonstrates that the rebellion was not an uncontrolled, inarticulate explosion of peasant resentment but an informed and tactical claim to literacy and rule. Focusing on six brief, enigmatic texts written by the rebels themselves, Justice places the English peasantry within a public discourse from which historians, both medieval and modern, have thus far excluded them. He recreates the imaginative world of medieval villagers--how they worked and governed themselves, how they used official communications in unofficial ways, and how they produced a disciplined insurgent ideology.--

English literature --- Peasantry --- Literature and society --- Written communication --- Peasant uprisings --- Tyler's Insurrection, 1381. --- Literacy --- Peasants --- Tyler's Insurrection, 1381 --- English --- Languages & Literatures --- English Literature --- Illiteracy --- Education --- General education --- Peasants' uprisings --- Uprisings, Peasant --- Insurgency --- Revolutions --- Written discourse --- Written language --- Communication --- Discourse analysis --- Language and languages --- Visual communication --- British literature --- Inklings (Group of writers) --- Nonsense Club (Group of writers) --- Order of the Fancy (Group of writers) --- Literature --- Literature and sociology --- Society and literature --- Sociology and literature --- Sociolinguistics --- Agricultural laborers --- Rural population --- Marks (Medieval land tenure) --- Villeinage --- Peasants' Revolt, 1381 --- Wat Tyler's Insurrection, 1381 --- History and criticism. --- Books and reading --- History. --- History and criticism --- History --- Social aspects --- Langland, William, --- Great Britain --- England --- Historiography. --- Intellectual life --- Social conditions --- 14th century english history. --- 14th century english social movements. --- authority. --- chaucer. --- cultural studies. --- england. --- english history. --- english peasantry. --- european history. --- gower. --- historicism medievalism. --- insurgent ideology. --- langland. --- literacy. --- medieval england. --- medieval literature. --- medieval villagers. --- official archives. --- peasant resentment. --- peasants revolt. --- public discourse. --- rebellion. --- rebels. --- rule. --- social change. --- social movement. --- textual culture. --- the new historicism studies in cultural poetics. --- written history. --- ENGLISH LITERATURE --- GREAT BRITAIN --- ENGLAND --- LANGLAND (WILLIAM), 1330?-1400? --- LITERATURE AND SOCIETY --- PEASANTS IN LITERATURE --- TYLER'S INSURRECTION IN LITERATURE --- MIDDLE ENGLISH, 1100-1500 --- HISTORY --- RICHARD II, 1377-1399 --- INTELLECTUAL LIFE --- MEDIEVAL PERIOD, 1066-1485 --- PIERS THE PLOWMAN