Shaping the Nation: England, 1360-1461

Published: Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Description: Harriss studies English social and political history from the Hundred Years' War to the Wars of the Roses as a period of cultural transformation that established the "shape of English society and government" that "it was to retain until the Civil War." Recurrent attention to Chaucer's life and works as well as to those of other authors of the period, including discussion of court patronage, the rise of vernacular literature, literature among the "gentry," and literary impact on political models. Includes a chronology, a bibliography, and an index.