Schools & Scholars in Fourteenth-Century England

William Courtenay provides a comprehensive account of educational structure and intellectual life in fourteenth-century England. Arguing that the two decades between 1320 and 1340 merit recognition as a golden age of English scholasticism, he examines the achievements of this period, their origins, and their adoption throughout continental Europe. He depicts an institutional setting, centered on Oxford but including cathedral and mendicant schools elsewhere, that rewarded not slavish obedience to school traditions but innovations in logic, mathematics, physics, and theology. He then analyzes the second half of the century, when thinkers like Wyclif moved toward more evangelical writing, when law outstripped theology in popularity at Oxford, and when courtly society replaced the schools as the major influence on English culture. Anticipating aspects of the sixteenth century, England after 1360 experienced an increase in lay literacy and a wider audience for biblical study, sermons, devotional treatises, and vernacular literature. The scope of Professor Courtenay's study of this transition from the world of Ockham to the world of Chaucer makes it of interest not only as a contribution to late medieval intellectual history but also as background for the study of Middle English literature.