Mingling kings and clowns: carnivalesque politics of the fifteenth-century King and Commoner tradition
Mark Truesdale
This thesis analyses the political ideologies of fifteenth-century King and Commoner tradition. critically neglected yet widespread tradition occupied a unique cultural space in literature later Middle Ages, leaving an indelible mark on British culture. Its influence study impacts outlaw literature, romance, Shakespearean drama. provides first detailed critical history close textual analysis as whole. Drawing Bakhtinian Foucauldian methodologies, it examines this material’s amalgamation carnival rituals with late-medieval complaint insurgent demands.

The Introduction traces analogues across other cultures, insular romance chronicles. Chapter One focuses Edward Shepherd (c. 1400), arguing that ‘bourde’ utilises commoner’s carnivalesque poached feast anti-noble complaints to invert social norms deconstruct hierarchical boundaries. The emerges here proto-panoptical spy, while court is identified corruption, oppression alterity amid containment. Two explores inversion John Reeve 1450), text repeatedly stages violence directed at body, culminating John’s storming court. Three Rauf Coilȝear 1460) A Gest Robyn Hode 1500), contending tradition’s elements allow interact both worlds Carolingian these hybrid texts. Four ballads chapbooks sixteenth eighteenth centuries, conservative, pro-monarchic material self-consciously contains remediates Appendix also identifies influenced drama from century onwards, highlighting absorption into array narratives, Robin Hood plays national histories.