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. 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.

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

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.