According to Green, the rapid spread of vernacular literacy in the England of Richard II was driven in large part by the bureaucratic and legal demands of an increasingly authoritarian central government. The change brought with it a fundamental shift toward the attitudes we still hold about the nature of evidence and proof-a move from a truth that resides almost exclusively in people to one that relies heavily on documents.
Green's magisterial study presents law and literature as two parallel discourses that have, at times, converged and influenced each other. Ranging deeply and widely over a huge body of legal and literary materials, from Anglo-Saxon England to twentieth-century Africa, it will provide a rich source of information for literary, legal, and historical scholars.
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