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OverviewAdam 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. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Steven Justice , Ruth Mazo KarrasPublisher: University of Pennsylvania Press Imprint: University of Pennsylvania Press Dimensions: Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 22.90cm Weight: 0.476kg ISBN: 9780812246933ISBN 10: 0812246934 Pages: 224 Publication Date: 25 March 2015 Audience: College/higher education , Undergraduate , Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: In Print  This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us. Table of ContentsIntroduction 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 AcknowledgmentsReviewsIn prose that is extraordinarily alive both to its subject and to its own suspenseful disclosures, Steven Justice teaches us to read a Latin chronicle as a piece of written craft, and few have sustained that attention this far or this finely. More importantly, Justice assesses and advances major principles of narrative interpretation, concerning how narratives relate to contexts, how rhetorical traditions foster or undermine particular visions of history, and how the discipline of literary analysis maintains a delicate balance between rigorous adherence to its established tenets and wider connections to other questions and explanations-matters that must surely energize discussion among humanities scholars of all periods. * Andrew Galloway, Cornell University * In prose that is extraordinarily alive both to its subject and to its own suspenseful disclosures, Steven Justice teaches us to read a Latin chronicle as a piece of written craft, and few have sustained that attention this far or this finely. More importantly, Justice assesses and advances major principles of narrative interpretation, concerning how narratives relate to contexts, how rhetorical traditions foster or undermine particular visions of history, and how the discipline of literary analysis maintains a delicate balance between rigorous adherence to its established tenets and wider connections to other questions and explanations-matters that must surely energize discussion among humanities scholars of all periods. -Andrew Galloway, Cornell University Author InformationSteven Justice is Chancellor's Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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