The Laborer's Two Bodies : Literary and Legal Productions in Britain, 1350-1500

This is an exploration the intellectual consequences of one of the most fundamental shifts in late medieval English society: the first national labour regulation in the wake of the 1348 plague. Bridging the medieval and early modern periods, this book analyzes a wide range of texts and images produced in this initial period of labour regulation. Front Matter....Pages i-ix Introduction: Keeping Paradise....Pages 1-12 The Laborer’s Two Bodies....Pages 13-50 Chaucer and the Enforcement of the Labor Statutes....Pages 51-77 The Ideology of Common Profit: Rebels, Heretics, Merchants....Pages 78-118 Corporeal Style: Representing the Gentry Household....Pages 119-152 “Let God Work!”: Drama and Rebellion in Fifteenth-Century East Anglia....Pages 153-182 Epilogue: Vagrant Times....Pages 183-193 Back Matter....Pages 194-276 Kellie Robertson explores the intellectual, cultural and political consequences of the first national labour regulation in 1348 in Britain. She analyses a wide variety of texts and images to show that the category of labour became a difficult subject for writers who struggled to understand its meanings