Focusing on renowned works such as those by Thomas Hoccleve, the anonymous Mum and the Sothsegger, William Langland’s Piers Plowman, John Lydgate’s translation of Guillaume de Deguileville’s Pelerinage de vie humaine, The Testimony of William Thorpe, selections from the York cycle of passion plays, and The Book of Margery Kempe, Craun unveils the pervasive moral discourse on silence cultivated by late medieval writers, both secular and clerical. These writers drew upon Roman popular morality, Stoic philosophies, Jewish wisdom traditions, and Christian texts.
These texts illustrate how silence could influence effective governance, address hostile adversaries, or, conversely, impede positive outcomes. Through a nuanced examination of the ethics of communication within medieval moral, narrative, and dramatic literature, this study reveals that public silences, then and now, carry strategies and consequences. Medieval writers explored these dimensions with subtlety and analytical precision, prompting ethical reflection and pragmatic action.
This exploration offers fresh thematic and rhetorical insights into the written history of silence, and will resonate with scholars, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates with interests in Middle English literature, history, and political thought.
