Feriby's "Lament for Richard II" and the English Literary History ca. 1400.

HENRY IV, King of England, 1367-1413; USK, Adam

William Feriby was an historic actor: Richard II's secretary between the "Revenge Parliament" of 1397-98 and the deposition of the king in September 1399; subsequently, a contributor to the deposition proceedings; and, finally, a rebel against Henry IV in January 1400. Feriby was also a literary figure, the author of an historical "Lament for Richard II," amongst other things, written in a highly mannered style of a sort to indicate an interest on Feriby's part in the purely literary: imagination and form. Though Feriby's prose style is distinctive, he was not the only historic-historiographical figure who manifested an interest in the strictly literary at the same moment, ca. 1400. The writings of Adam Usk, Thomas Favent, the Historia vitae author, and Thomas Brinton-- even the deposition proceedings and the documentary record of them (the "Record and Process")--are comparably (though differently) literary. The relations between Ricardian history and literature can be reconceived, dialectically, by light of such evidence: the literature is historical and historic, but, also, the history itself and historiography are literary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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