1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910464097703321

Autore

Justice Steven <1957->

Titolo

Adam Usk's secret / / Steven Justice

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : , : University of Pennsylvania Press, , 2015

©2015

ISBN

0-8122-9105-0

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (222 pages)

Collana

Middle Ages Series

Disciplina

942.03/8

Soggetti

Written communication - England - History - To 1500

Electronic books.

Great Britain History Richard II, 1377-1399 Historiography

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

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

Sommario/riassunto

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.