Pedagogy, Intellectuals, and Dissent in the Later Middle Ages Lollardy and Ideas of Learning

This book is about the place of pedagogy and the role of intellectuals in medieval dissent. Focusing on the medieval English heresy known as Lollardy, Rita Copeland places heretical and orthodox attitudes to learning in a long historical perspective that reaches back to antiquity. She shows how educational ideologies of ancient lineage left their imprint on the most sharply politicized categories of late medieval culture, and how radical teachers transformed inherited ideas about classrooms and pedagogy as they brought their teaching to adult learners. The pedagogical imperatives of Lollard dissent were also embodied in the work of certain public figures, intellectuals whose dissident careers transformed the social category of the medieval intellectual. Looking closely at the prison narratives of two Lollard preachers, Copeland shows how their writings could serve as examples for their fellow dissidents and forge a new rapport between academic and non-academic communities.

Acknowledgments; General introduction: pedagogy and intellectuals; Part I. From Pedagogies to Hermeneutics: Childhood, the Literal Sense and the Heretical Classroom: Introduction; 1. Revaluating the literal sense from antiquity to the Middle Ages; 2. Lollardy and the politics of the literal sense; Part II. Violent Representations: Intellectuals and Prison Writing: Introduction; 3. Richard Wyche and the public record; 4. William Thorpe and the historical record; Bibliography; Index.

This book is about the place of pedagogy and the role of intellectuals in medieval dissent. Focusing on the medieval English heresy known as Lollardy, Rita Copeland shows how how radical teachers transformed inherited ideas about classrooms and pedagogy as they brought their teaching to adult learners.

Rita Copeland is Professor of Classical Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania.