A crisis of truth
Subtitle: literature and law in Ricardian England
By: Richard Firth Green.
Series: The Middle Ages series
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 1999
Place of publication: Philadelphia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 496
Subjects: English literature -- Middle English, 1100-1500 -- History and criticism; Law and literature -- History -- To 1500; Law, Medieval, in literature; Truth in literature; Law -- Great Britain; Great Britain -- History -- Richard II, 1377-1399
Description: In the late fourteenth century, the complex Middle English word trouthe, which had earlier meant something like "integrity" or "dependability," began to take on its modern sense of "conformity to fact." At the same time, the meaning of its antonym, tresoun, began to move from "personal betrayal" to "a crime against the state." In A Crisis of Truth, Richard Firth Green contends that these alterations in meaning were closely linked to a growing emphasis on the written over the spoken and to the simultaneous reshaping of legal thought and practice.

Green's study presents law and literature as two parallel discourses which have, at times, converged and influenced each other. Ranging deeply and widely over a huge body of legal and literary materials, from Anglo-Saxon England to twentieth-century Africa, it will provide a rich source of information for literary, legal, and historical scholars.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [433]-473) and index.