THE 2012 NAGS/PROQUEST DISTINGUISHED MASTER'S THESIS AWARD IN THE ARTS & HUMANITIES:

Sarah Keeshan, Dalhousie University

The Mind's Eye: Reconstructing the Historian's Semantic Matrix through Henry Knighton's Account of the Peasants' Revolt, 1381

The medieval historian engaged with the systems of power and authority that surrounded him. In his account of the Peasants' Revolt in late medieval England, the ecclesiastical historian Henry Knighton (d. 1396) both reinforced and challenged the traditional order. This thesis explores the ways in which his ideological perspectives shaped his understanding of the events of June 1381 and how this understanding was articulated through the structure, language, and cultural meaning of the historical text. An Augustinian canon in Leicester, his thinking was shaped by a thoroughly Christian paradigm. In addition, his interactions with both the secular and ecclesiastical worlds as a lay cleric at one of the country's wealthiest abbeys, as well as the patronage of John of Gaunt, a controversial figure so central to the late-fourteenth century shaped his understanding of the conflict. Knighton's work is also particularly valuable to modern historians due to the fact that his account was not influenced by the demand for dynastic loyalty that shaped the contemporary historical accounts that followed Henry IV's usurpation of the throne in 1399. Most significantly, the reconstruction of his thesis of authorial intention and the reclamation of both Knighton and the medieval reader as active participants in the creation of history challenge a historiography that has long disregarded Knighton as an unremarkable historical recorder. Instead, they reveal a scholar whose often extraordinary approach to the rebels and traditional authorities expresses a great deal about the theory, practice, and construction of power and authority in late medieval England. Through his use of language alone, Knighton reveals a socio-political space for legitimate social dissent, the existence of which has implications not only for our understanding of the Peasants' Revolt, but for the articulation of power, authority, and dissent today as well.