Adam Usk's secret / Steven Justice.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Justice, Steven, 1957- author.

Series:

Middle Ages series.

Middle Ages Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Adam, of Usk, active 1400. Chronicon Adae de Usk, A.D. 1377-1421.

Adam.

Adam, of Usk, active 1400--Literary art.

Written communication--England--History--To 1500.

Written communication.

Great Britain--History--Richard II, 1377-1399--Historiography.

Great Britain.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (222 pages).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Adam Usk, a Welsh lawyer in England and Rome during the first years of the fifteenth century, lived a peculiar life. He was, by turns, a professor, a royal advisor, a traitor, a schismatic, and a spy. He cultivated and then sabotaged figures of great influence, switching allegiances between kings, upstarts, and popes at an astonishing pace. Usk also wrote a peculiar book: a chronicle of his own times, composed in a strangely anxious and secretive voice that seems better designed to withhold vital facts than to recount them. His bold starts tumble into anticlimax; he interrupts what he starts to tell and omits what he might have told. Yet the kind of secrets a political man might find safer to keep—the schemes and violence of regime change—Usk tells openly. Steven Justice sets out to find what it was that Adam Usk wanted to hide. His search takes surprising turns through acts of political violence, persecution, censorship, and, ultimately, literary history. Adam Usk's narrow, eccentric literary genius calls into question some of the most casual and confident assumptions of literary criticism and historiography, making stale rhetorical habits seem new. Adam Usk's Secret concludes with a sharp challenge to historians over what they think they can know about literature—and to literary scholars over what they think they can know about history.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1. The First Secret

Chapter 2. The Story of William Clerk

Chapter 3. Fear

Chapter 4. Prophecy

Chapter 5. Utility

Chapter 6. Grief

Chapter 7. Theory of History

Chapter 8. Adam Usk’s Secret

Conclusion

List of Abbreviations

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780812291056

0812291050

OCLC:

903319794