03618nam 2200637 450 991046409770332120210427025052.00-8122-9105-010.9783/9780812291056(CKB)2670000000592471(SSID)ssj0001442079(PQKBManifestationID)11843272(PQKBTitleCode)TC0001442079(PQKBWorkID)11418467(PQKB)11742661(MiAaPQ)EBC3442474(OCoLC)903319794(MdBmJHUP)muse42166(DE-B1597)451275(DE-B1597)9780812291056(Au-PeEL)EBL3442474(CaPaEBR)ebr11015005(CaONFJC)MIL719012(EXLCZ)99267000000059247120150211h20152015 uy 0engurcnu||||||||txtccrAdam Usk's secret /Steven Justice1st ed.Philadelphia, Pennsylvania :University of Pennsylvania Press,2015.©20151 online resource (222 pages)Middle Ages SeriesBibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph1-322-87730-0 0-8122-4693-4 Includes bibliographical references and index.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 --AcknowledgmentsAdam 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.Middle Ages series.Written communicationEnglandHistoryTo 1500Great BritainHistoryRichard II, 1377-1399HistoriographyElectronic books.Written communicationHistory942.03/8Justice Steven1957-1021320MiAaPQMiAaPQMiAaPQBOOK9910464097703321Adam Usk's secret2470158UNINA