Four Wycliffite Dialogues

This group of previously unpublished prose treatises, all cast as fictional dialogues, survives in single and different manuscripts of the early fifteenth century. They are probably by different authors, but they cohere in their ideological outlook, subject matter and use of the debate form. The first and longest, 'Jon and Richard', and the second, a debate between a 'Friar and a Secular', express anti-fraternal opinions, while the third and fourth, between 'Reson and Gabbing' and a 'Clerk and a Knight' are concerned with the relative powers of the Church and state. The four dialogues are of particular interest not just for their debate form, but for their assimilation into the vernacular of academic vocabulary and habits of reasoning, and for their outspoken expression of views which tend to be expressed obscurely or allusively in other Wycliffite writing.

Fiona Somerset is Associate Professor of English at Duke University.