Books under Suspicion: Censorship and Tolerance of Revelatory Writing
in Late Medieval England examines the censorship issues that propelled
the major writers of the period toward their massive use of visionary
genres. Kathryn Kerby-Fulton suggests that writers and translators as
different as Chaucer, Langland, Julian of Norwich, "M.N.," and Margery
Kempe positioned their work to take advantage of the tacit toleration
that both religious and secular authorities extended to revelatory
theology. The book examines controversial ideas as diverse as the early
experimental humanism of Chaucer, censured beatific vision theology and
the breakdown of Langland's A Text, the English reception of M.N.'s
translation of Marguerite Porete's condemned book, Julian's authorial
suppression of her gender, and the impact of suspect Continental women's
activism on Kempe.
Kerby-Fulton also narrates success stories of intellectual freedom,
tracing evidence of ecclesiastical tolerance of revelation, the
impossibility of official censorship in a manuscript culture, and the
powerful, protected reading circles for radical apocalypticism and
mysticism, such as those of the Austins and the Carthusians. Until now,
Wycliffism has been seen as the only significant unorthodox or radical
body of writings in late medieval England. Books under Suspicion is the
first comprehensive study of banned non-Wycliffite materials in Insular
writing during the period of the Avignon and Great Schism papacies.
This weighty, complex, and rewarding book makes use of neglected
material in manuscripts and archives to reconstruct new aspects of the
history of religious thought and vernacular writing in Ricardian and
early Lancastrian England. As such it will interest scholars of late
medieval religious history and Middle English literary history.
