The Problem of Labour in Fourteenth-Century England

doi:10.1017/9781846151385

At the very moment that the image of the honest labourer seemed to reach its apogee in the Luttrell Psalter or, a few decades later, in 'Piers Plowman', the dominant culture of the landed interests was increasingly suspicious of what it described as the idleness, greed and arrogance of the lower orders. Labour was one of the central issues during the fourteenth century: the natural disasters and profound social changes of the period created not merely a 'problem' of labour, but also new ways of discussing and (supposedly) solving that problem. These studies engage with the contrasting and often competing discourses which emerged, ranging from the critical social awareness of some of the early fourteenth-century protest literature to the repressive authoritarianism of the new national employment laws that were enforced in the wake of the Black Death, and were expressed in counter-cultures of resistance and dissent.

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The Problem of Labour in Fourteenth-Century England

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Contents

Frontmatter
pp i-iv

Contents
pp v-v

List of Figures
pp vi-vi

Preface
pp vii-viii

1 - The Problem of Women's Work Identities in Post Black Death England
pp 1-20

2 - Work Ethics in the Fourteenth Century
pp 21-42

3 - ‘The Lord Geoffrey had me made’: Lordship and Labour in the Luttrell Psalter
pp 43-64

4 - Framing Labour: The Archaeology of York's Medieval Guildhalls
pp 65-84

5 - The Problem of Labour in the Context of English Government, c. 1350–1450
pp 85-100

6 - The Voice of Labour in Fourteenth-Century English Literature
pp 101-122

7 - Piers Plowman and the Problem of Labour
pp 123-132

8 - Household, Work and the Problem of Mobile Labour: The Regulation of Labour in Medieval English Towns
pp 133-154

York Medieval Press: Publications
pp 155-155

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The Problem of Labour in Fourteenth-Century England

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