Bryant, Brantley L.http://hdl.handle.net/10211.3/1223342024-03-29T09:11:17Z2024-03-29T09:11:17ZTalking with the Taxman about Poetry: England's Economy in ''Against the King's Taxes" and Wynnere and WastoureBryant, Brantley L.http://hdl.handle.net/10211.3/1223402014-10-02T06:54:04Z2008-01-01T00:00:00ZTalking with the Taxman about Poetry: England's Economy in ''Against the King's Taxes" and Wynnere and Wastoure
Bryant, Brantley L.
"THE LAW THAT makes my wool the king's is no just law" ("Non est lex
sana quod regi sit mea lana"), proclaims the anonymous Anglo-Norman
and Latin poem whose editorial title, "Against the King's Taxes," reflects
the depth of its antipathy to royal exactions. This eighty-five line macaronic
poem, probably composed in the late 1330s, rails against the extortions
of wool collectors, the pride of the great, and the process of tax
granting. Written at least a decade later, the Middle English Wynnere and Wastoure
imagines England's economy more expansively. While "Taxes"
bases its polemic arguments on Christian eschatology's threats and
rewards for individual souls, Wynnere and Wastoure invests itself in the
collective economic good of the realm. Imagining England's wealth as a
single shared treasury, the later poem seamlessly integrates moral and
economic principles in an enactment of the political status quo. Whereas
"Taxes" laments the injustice of parliamentary tax grants, Wynnere presents
us with an idealized poetic representation of the same process. These two texts provide some of the most richly detailed poetic treatment
of the English economy in the fourteenth century, but they tell us the
most when put in comparison. Their marked differences provide insight
into the genre of political poetry and the relationship between political
thought and poetic creation in this period..
Published by and copyright of AMS Press, Inc.
2008-01-01T00:00:00Z