Part II - Literary Texts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 July 2019
Summary
Attempts to define treason often imply a debate about the very nature and limits of the law, and about the legal authority of governments. Medieval literature reflects such tensions, but also seems to invest imaginatively in the concept of treason to an extent that the history of law alone cannot explain. In this chapter it is argued that treason took on a new shape during the period from the 1260s to the 1340s, and that this was to have a lasting effect on its representation, not just in English law, but also in English culture more generally. This evolution was significantly conditioned by the political turmoils of the period, including the Second Barons’ War of 1264–7, Edward I’s campaigns in Wales and Scotland, Edward II’s conflict with Thomas of Lancaster, and Edward II’s eventual deposition in 1327. Literary texts testify to the legal paradigm-shifts provoked by these events, and to the differences of political principle that underlay them; but they themselves seem to have played a part in the very processes that led to the creation of these new paradigms. What we see in several late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century texts is something of the cultural and political ferment in which new attitudes to treason were formed.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019
References
Further Reading
Bellamy, J. G., The Law of Treason in England in the Later Middle Ages, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.Google Scholar
Fein, Susanna, ed., Studies in the Harley Manuscript: The Scribes, Contents, and Social Contexts of British Library MS Harley 2253, Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 2000.Google Scholar
Fein, Susanna, with Raybin, David and Ziolkowski, Jan, ed./trans., The Complete Harley 2253 Manuscript, 3 vols., TEAMS Middle English Text Series, Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 2015Google Scholar
Green, Richard Firth, A Crisis of Truth: Literature and Law in Ricardian England, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999 (see esp. ch. 6, ‘Truth and Treason’).Google Scholar
Pollock, Frederick and Maitland, F. W., The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I, 2nd edn, 2 vols., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1898. Repr. with intro. by S. F. C. Milson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968.Google Scholar
Scattergood, John, ‘Authority and Resistance: The Political Verse’, in Studies in the Harley Manuscript: The Scribes, Contents, and Social Contexts of British Library MS Harley 2253, ed. Fein, Susanna, Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 2000, 163–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, Thomas, ed., Political Songs of England: From the Reign of John to That of Edward II, London: Camden Society, 1839. Repr. with intro by Peter Coss, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Wright, Thomas, ed., The Chronicle of Pierre de Langtoft: In French Verse, From the Earliest Period to the Death of King Edward I, 2 vols., Rolls Series 47, London: Longmans, 1866–8.Google Scholar
Further Reading
Boffey, Julia, ‘“Forto Compleyne She Had Gret Desire”: The Grievances Expressed in Two Fifteenth-Century Dream-Visions’, in Nation, Court and Culture: New Essays on Fifteenth-Century English Poetry, ed. Cooney, Helen, Dublin: Four Courts, 2001, 116–28.Google Scholar
Dodd, Gwilym, Justice and Grace: Private Petitioning and the English Parliament in the Late Middle Ages, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Dodd, Gwilym and McHardy, Alison K., eds., Petitions to the Crown from English Religious Houses, c. 1272–1485, Woodbridge: Boydell, 2010.Google Scholar
Giancarlo, Matthew, Parliament and Literature in Late Medieval England, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Oliver, Clementine, Parliament and Political Pamphleteering in Fourteenth-Century England, Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ormrod, W. Mark, Dodd, Gwilym and Musson, Anthony, eds., Medieval Petitions: Grace and Grievance, Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Patterson, Lee, ‘Writing Amorous Wrongs: Chaucer and the Order of Complaint’, in The Idea of Medieval Literature, ed. Dean, J. M. and Zacher, C. K., Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 1992, 55–71.Google Scholar
Scase, Wendy, Literature and Complaint in England, 1272–1553, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Further Reading
Agamben, Giorgio, State of Exception, trans. Kevin Attell, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Barr, Helen, Signes and Sothe: Language in the Piers Plowman Tradition, Woodbridge: Boydell, 1994.Google Scholar
Burns, J. H., The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought c.350–c.1450, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Galloway, Andrew, ‘The Common Voice in Theory and Practice in Late Fourteenth Century England’, in Law, Governance, and Justice: New Views on Medieval Constitutionalism, ed. Richard, Kaeuper, Leiden: Brill, 2013, 243–86.Google Scholar
Giancarlo, Matthew, Parliament and Literature in Late Medieval England, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Harding, A., The Law Courts of Medieval England, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1973.Google Scholar
Justice, Steven, Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Oliver, Clementine, Parliament and Political Pamphleteering in Fourteenth-Century England, Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Sobecki, Sebastian, Unwritten Verities: The Making of Vernacular Legal Culture, 1463–1549, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Taylor, Jamie K., Fictions of Evidence: Witnessing, Literature, and Community in the Late Middle Ages, Columbus: University of Ohio Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Further Reading
Boboc, Andreea D., Theorizing Legal Personhood in Late Medieval England, Leiden: Brill, 2015.Google Scholar
Cole, Andrew and Galloway, Andrew, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Piers Plowman, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Fowler, Elizabeth, ‘Civil Death and the Maiden: Agency and the Conditions of Contract in Piers Plowman’, Speculum 70:4 (1995), 760–92.Google Scholar
Galloway, Andrew, The Penn Commentary on Piers Plowman, Vol. 1: C Prologue-Passus 4; B Prologue-Passus 4; A Prologue-Passus 4. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Galloway, Andrew, ‘Piers Plowman and the Subject of the Law’, The Yearbook of Langland Studies 15 (2001), 117–40.Google Scholar
Giancarlo, Matthew, Parliament and Literature in Late Medieval England, vol. 64, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Holsinger, Bruce W., ‘Langland’s Musical Reader: Liturgy, Law, and the Constraints of Performance’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 21:1 (1991), 99–141.Google Scholar
Kennedy, Kathleen, Maintenance, Meed, and Marriage in Medieval English Literature, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.Google Scholar
Middleton, Anne, ‘Acts of Vagrancy: The C Version “Autobiography” and the Statute of 1388’, in Written Work: Langland, Labor, and Authorship, ed. Justice, Steven and Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997, 208–317.Google Scholar
Scase, Wendy, Literature and Complaint in England 1272–1553, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Sobecki, Sebastian, Unwritten Verities: The Making of England’s Vernacular Legal Culture, 1463–1549, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Documentary Culture and the Making of Medieval English Literature, vol. 50, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Steiner, Emily and Barrington, Candace, eds., The Letter of the Law: Legal Practice and Literary Production in Medieval England, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Taylor, Jamie K., Fictions of Evidence: Witnessing, Literature, and Community in the Late Middle Ages, Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Thomas, Arvind, ‘The Subject of Canon Law: Confessing Covetise in Piers Plowman B and C and the Memoriale presbiterorum’, The Yearbook of Langland Studies 24 (2010), 139–68.Google Scholar
Yeager, Stephen, From Lawmen to Plowmen: Anglo-Saxon Legal Tradition and the School of Langland, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Further Reading
Cannon, Christopher, ‘Chaucer and Rape: Uncertainty’s Certainties’, in Representing Rape in Medieval and Early Modern Literature, ed. Elizabeth, Robertson and Christine, M. Rose, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001, 255–79.Google Scholar
Cannon, Christopher‘The Lives of Geoffrey Chaucer’, in The Yale Companion to Chaucer, ed. Lerer, Seth, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006, 31–54.Google Scholar
Cannon, Christopher‘Raptus in the Chaumpaigne Release and a Newly Discovered Document Concerning the Life of Geoffrey Chaucer’, Speculum 68:1 (1993), 74–94.Google Scholar
Kelly, Henry Ansgar, ‘Meanings and Uses of Raptus in Chaucer’s Time’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 20 (1998), 101–65.Google Scholar
Kennedy, Kathleen E., Maintenance, Meed, and Marriage in Medieval English Literature, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.Google Scholar
Provost, Jeanne, ‘Vital Property in The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 38 (2016), 39–74.Google Scholar
Rose, Christine M., ‘Reading Chaucer Reading Rape’, in Representing Rape in Medieval and Early Modern Literature, ed. Elizabeth, Robertson and Christine, M. Rose, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001, 23–60.Google Scholar
Sobecki, Sebastian, ‘Wards and Widows: Troilus and Criseyde and New Documents on Chaucer’s Life’, ELH, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Taylor, Jamie, Fictions of Evidence: Witnessing, Literature, and Community in the Late Middle Ages, Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Further Reading
Barrington, Candace, ‘John Gower’s Legal Advocacy and “In Praise of Peace”’, in John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition, ed. Dutton, Elisabeth, with John Hines and R. F. Yeager, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010, 112–25Google Scholar
Barrington, Candace‘The Spectral Advocate in John Gower’s Trentham Manuscript’, in Theorizing Legal Personhood: Medieval Law and Its Practice, ed. Boboc, Andreea, Leiden: Brill, 2015, 94–118.Google Scholar
Bellamy, J. G., Bastard Feudalism and the Law, Portland, OR: Areopagitica Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Brundage, James A., The Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession: Canonists, Civilians, and Courts, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Fisher, John H., John Gower: Moral Philosopher and Friend of Chaucer, New York: New York University Press, 1964.Google Scholar
Giancarlo, Matthew, ‘The Septvauns Affair: Purchase and Parliament in John Gower’s Mirour de l’Omme’, Viator 36 (2005), 435–64.Google Scholar
Green, Richard Firth, ‘Medieval Literature and Law’, in The Cambridge History of Medieval Literature, ed. Wallace, David, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, 25–36.Google Scholar
Hanawalt, Barbara A. The Wealth of Wives: Women, Law, and Economy in Late Medieval London, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Meindl, Robert J. ‘Gower’s Speculum Iudicis: Judicial Corruption in Book VI of the Vox Clamantis’, in John Gower: Others and the Self, ed. Peck, Russell A. and Yeager, R. F., Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2017, 260–82.Google Scholar
Meindl, Robert J.‘Nuisance and Trespass in the Vox Clamantis: Sheriffs, Jurors, and Bailiffs’, Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic and Semiotic Analysis 20 (2015), 181–213.Google Scholar
Musson, Anthony and Ormrod, W. M., The Evolution of English Justice: Law, Politics and Society in the Fourteenth Century, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Plucknett, Theodore T. F., A Concise History of the Common Law, 5th edn, Boston, 1956; Clark, NJ: Lawbook Exchange, 2010.Google Scholar
Sobecki, Sebastian, ‘A Southwark Tale: Gower, the 1381 Poll Tax, and Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales’, Speculum 92 (2017), 630–60.Google Scholar
van Dijk, Conrad, John Gower and the Limits of the Law, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013.Google Scholar
Yeager, R. F. ‘John Gower’s Poetry and the “Lawyerly Habit of Mind”’, in Theorizing Legal Personhood: Medieval Law and Its Practice, ed. Boboc, Andreea, Leiden: Brill, 2015, 71–93.Google Scholar
Further Reading
Arnold, John, ‘Lollard Trials and Inquisitorial Discourse’, in Fourteenth Century England, ed. Given-Wilson, Christopher, Woodbridge: Boydell, 2002, II , 81–94.Google Scholar
Councils and Synods with Other Documents relating to the English Church II: 1205–1313, ed. Powicke, F. M. and Cheney, C. R., 2 vols., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964.Google Scholar
Craun, Edwin D., ‘Discarding Traditional Pastoral Ethics: Wycliffism and Slander’, in Wycliffite Controversies, ed. Bose, Mishtooni C. A. and Patrick Hornbeck, J. II, Turnhout: Brepols, 2012, 227–42.Google Scholar
Craun, Edwin D.Ethics and Power in Medieval English Reformist Writing, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
The English Works of Wyclif Hitherto Unprinted, 2nd edn, ed. Matthew, F. D., EETS o.s. 74, London: Trübner, 1880.Google Scholar
Forrest, Ian, The Detection of Heresy in Late Medieval England, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Forrest, Ian‘William Swinderby and the Wycliffite Attitude to Excommunication’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 60 (2009), 246–69.Google Scholar
Four Wycliffite Dialogues, ed. Somerset, Fiona EETS o.s. 333, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Norwich, 1428–31, ed. Tanner, Norman P., S. J. Camden Society, fourth series, vol. 20, London: Royal Historical Society, 1977.Google Scholar
Hornbeck II, J. Patrick, ‘Records of Heresy Trials’, in Wycliffite Spirituality, ed. and trans. Patrick Hornbeck, J. II, Lahey, Stephen E. and Somerset, Fiona, New York: Paulist, 2013.Google Scholar
Hudson, Anne, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Jurkowski, Maureen, ‘The Arrest of William Thorpe in Shrewsbury and the Anti–Lollard statute of 1406’, Historical Research 75:189 (2002), 273–95.Google Scholar
Lollards of Coventry 1486–1522, ed. McSheffrey, Shannon and Tanner, Norman, Royal Historical Society, Camden Society, fifth series, vol. 23., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Select Cases on Defamation to 1600, ed. Helmholz, R. H., Selden Society 101, London, 1985.Google Scholar
Selections from English Wycliffite Writings, 2nd edn, ed. Hudson, Anne, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Somerset, Fiona, ‘A Mirror to See God in: An Edition of “Þe Wordes of Poule”’, Yearbook of Langland Studies 31 (2017), 257–86.Google Scholar
[Thirty-Seven Conclusions] Remonstrance against Romish Corruptions, ed. Forshall, J., London, 1851.Google Scholar
Thorpe, William, The Testimony of William Thorpe, in Two Wycliffite Texts, ed. Hudson, Anne, EETS o.s. 301, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, 24–93.Google Scholar
Wyche, Richard, ‘The Letter of Richard Wyche: An Interrogation Narrative’, ed. and trans. Bradley, Christopher G., Publications of the Modern Language Association 127, 2012, 626–42.Google Scholar
Further Reading
Giancarlo, Matthew, Parliament and Literature in Late Medieval England, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
McGerr, Rosemarie, A Lancastrian Mirror for Princes: The Yale Law School New Statutes of England, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Nuttall, Jennifer, The Creation of Lancastrian Kingship: Literature, Language and Politics in Late Medieval England, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Scase, Wendy, Literature and Complaint in England, 1272–1553, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Sobecki, Sebastian, Unwritten Verities: The Making of England’s Vernacular Legal Culture, 1463–1549, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Staley, Lynn, Languages of Power in the Age of Richard II, Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Strohm, Paul, England’s Empty Throne: Usurpation and the Language of Legitimation, 1399–1422, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998; repr. 2006.Google Scholar
Strohm, Paul, Politique: Languages of Statecraft between Chaucer and Shakespeare, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Further Reading
Appleby, John C. and Dalton, Paul, Outlaws in Medieval and Early Modern England: Crime, Government and Society, c.1066–c.1600, Farnham: Ashgate, 2009.Google Scholar
Archibald, Elizabeth and Edwards, A. S. G., eds., A Companion to Malory, Arthurian Studies 37, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1996.Google Scholar
Archibald, Elizabeth and Putter, Ad, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Arthurian Legend, Cambridge Companions to Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Bellamy, J. G., The Law of Treason in England in the Later Middle Ages, Cambridge Studies in Legal History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.Google Scholar
Cartlidge, Neil, ed., Boundaries in Medieval Romance, Studies in Medieval Romance, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2008.Google Scholar
Cartlidge, Neiled., Heroes and Anti-Heroes in Medieval Romance, Studies in Medieval Romance, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2012.Google Scholar
Cherewatuk, Karen, Marriage, Adultery and Inheritance in Malory’s ‘Morte Darthur’, Arthurian Studies 68, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006.Google Scholar
Clanchy, M. T., From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307, 2nd edn, Oxford: Blackwell, 1993.Google Scholar
Cooper, Helen, The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Crane, Susan, Insular Romance: Politics, Faith, and Culture in Anglo-Norman and Middle English Literature, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Field, P. J. C., The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Malory, Arthurian Studies 29, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993.Google Scholar
Furrow, Melissa, Expectations of Romance: The Reception of a Genre in Medieval England, Studies in Medieval Romance, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2009.Google Scholar
Green, Richard Firth, A Crisis of Truth: Literature and Law in Ricardian England, The Middle Ages Series, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Harding, Alan, Medieval Law and the Foundations of the State, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Hudson, John, The Formation of the English Common Law: Law and Society in England from the Norman Conquest to Magna Carta, The Medieval World, London: Longman, 1996.Google Scholar
Jones, Timothy S., Outlawry in Medieval Literature, The New Middle Ages, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.Google Scholar
Kennedy, Beverly, Knighthood in the ‘Morte Darthur’, 2nd edn, Arthurian Studies 11, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1992.Google Scholar
Knight, Stephen, Robin Hood: A Complete Study of the English Outlaw, Oxford: Blackwell, 1994.Google Scholar
Krueger, Roberta L., ed., The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, Cambridge Companions to Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Leitch, Megan G., Romancing Treason: The Literature of the Wars of the Roses, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Lynch, Andrew, Malory’s Book of Arms: The Narrative of Combat in ‘Le Morte Darthur’, Arthurian Studies 39, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997.Google Scholar
Meale, Carol M., ed., Readings in Medieval English Romance, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994.Google Scholar
Menuge, Noël James, Medieval English Wardship in Romance and Law, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2001.Google Scholar
Musson, Anthony, Medieval Law in Context: The Growth of Legal Consciousness from Magna Carta to the Peasants’ Revolt, Manchester Medieval Studies, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Purdie, Rhiannon and Cichon, Michael, eds., Medieval Romance, Medieval Contexts, Studies in Medieval Romance, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2011.Google Scholar
Putter, Ad and Gilbert, Jane, ed., The Spirit of Medieval English Popular Romance, Longman Medieval and Renaissance Library, Harlow: Longman-Pearson Education, 2002.Google Scholar
Radulescu, Raluca, The Gentry Context for Malory’s ‘Morte Darthur’, Arthurian Studies 55, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003.Google Scholar
Radulescu, Raluca and Rushton, Cory, eds., A Companion to Medieval Popular Romance, Studies in Medieval Romance, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2009.Google Scholar
Riddy, Felicity, Sir Thomas Malory, Medieval and Renaissance Authors, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987.Google Scholar
Ross, Charles, The Custom of the Castle: From Malory to Macbeth, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Rouse, Robert, The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England in Middle English Romance, Studies in Medieval Romance, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005.Google Scholar
Saunders, Corinne, ed., A Companion to Romance: From Classical to Contemporary, Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture, Oxford: Blackwell, 2004.Google Scholar
Saunders, CorinneCultural Encounters in the Romance of Medieval England, Studies in Medieval Romance, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005.Google Scholar
Saunders, Corinne, The Forest of Medieval Romance: Avernus, Broceliande, Arden, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993.Google Scholar
Saunders, CorinneMagic and the Supernatural in Medieval English Romance, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010.Google Scholar
Saunders, CorinneRape and Ravishment in the Literature of Medieval England, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2001.Google Scholar
Weiss, Judith, Fellows, Jennifer and Dickson, Morgan, eds., Medieval Insular Romance: Translation and Innovation, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000.Google Scholar
York, Ernest C., ‘Legal Punishment in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur’, English Language Notes 11 (1973–4), 14–21.Google Scholar
Further Reading
Arnold, John H., ‘Margery’s Trials: Heresy, Lollardy and Dissent’ in A Companion to The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Arnold, John H. and Lewis, Katherine J., Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004, 75–93.Google Scholar
Cannon, Christopher, ‘The Rights of Medieval English Women: Crime and the Issue of Representation’, in Medieval Crime and Social Control, ed. Hanawalt, Barbara A. and Wallace, David, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999, 156–85.Google Scholar
Enders, Jody, Rhetoric and the Origins of Medieval Drama, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Gold, Penny, ‘The Marriage of Mary and Joseph in the Twelfth-Century Ideology of Marriage’, in Sexual Practices and the Medieval Church, ed. Bullough, Vern and Brundage, James, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1982, 102–17.Google Scholar
Horner, Olga, ‘“Us Make Lies”: Witness, Evidence and Proof in the York Resurrection’, Medieval English Theatre (1998), 24–76.Google Scholar
Hunt, Alison M, ‘Maculating Mary: The Detractors of the N-Town Cycle’s “Trial of Joseph and Mary”’, Philological Quarterly 73 (1994), 11–29.Google Scholar
King, Pamela M., ‘Contemporary Cultural Models for the Trial Plays in the York Cycle’, in Drama and Community: People and Plays in Medieval Europe, ed. Hindley, Alan, Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1999, 200–16.Google Scholar
Lipton, Emma, Affections of the Mind: The Politics of Sacramental Marriage in Late Medieval English Literature, Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Lipton, Emma,‘Language on Trial: Performing the Law in the N-Town Trial Play’, in The Letter of the Law: Legal Practice and Literary Production in Medieval England, ed. Steiner, Emily and Barrington, Candace, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002, 115–35.Google Scholar
McCarthy, Conor, Marriage in Medieval England: Law, Literature and Practice, Woodbridge, UK, and Rochester, NY: Boydell, 2004.Google Scholar
McSheffrey, Shannon, Marriage, Sex and Civic Culture in Late Medieval London, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Sheehan, Michael M., Marriage, Family and Law in Medieval Europe: Collected Studies, ed. James K. Farge, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Taylor, Jamie K., Fictions of Evidence: Witnessing, Literature and Community in the Late Middle Ages, Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2013.Google Scholar