The Creation of Lancastrian Kingship

Jenni Nuttall is a College Lecturer in English at St Edmund Hall in the University of Oxford.

• Introduction; Part I. Household Narratives: 1. Stereotyping Richard and the Ricardian familia; 2. The dissemination of the Ricardian stereotype; 3. Politicizing pre-existing languages; 4. From stereotypes to standards; 5. Household narratives in Lancastrian poetry; Part II. Credit and Love: 6. Promises, expectations, explanations and solutions; 7. A discourse of credit and loyalty; 8. Credit and fraud in Hoccleve's regiment; Conclusion. Lancastrian conversations; Bibliography.

Review of the hardback: 'Nuttall's book is dense, thorough, and technically proficient … So Nuttall's book deserves credit for a monograph that will long be the last word on its subject. She is the painstaking chronicler of an age of discontent. All those concerned with politics and literature between the 1930s and early years of Henry V will then have to take account of her work. … The Creation of Lancastrian Kingship is, then, a book for historians of poetry and historians of politics. The former will thank her for wading through reams of official documentation (calendars of close rolls, proceedings of privy councils, and so on) to extract valuable data. The latter will find it in discussions of poetry altogether more expert and penetrating than those of some previous writers. Together, then will learn more readily what the poets of a turbulent epoch have to tell them, and understand the world better in which those poets lived.' Modern Language Review