The Oxford English Literary History

In this pioneering volume, James Simpson covers broad ground, ranging from the extraordinary burst of English literary writing under the reign of Richard II to the literature of the Reformation. Challenging traditional assumptions, Simpson argues that the stylistic diversity enjoyed by late medieval writers was curtailed by the authoritarian practice of the sixteenth-century cultural revolution. The variety of medieval writing - Chaucer, Langland, Malory, the 'mystery' plays, feminine visionary writing - gave place to the brilliant, poignant works of Wyatt, Surrey, for example, who prized coherence and unity. Sixteenth-century English Literature emerges as the product of anguished writers, torn between their commitment to the new order and their awareness of its painful, often destructive constraints.