READING REBELLIONS

This was not the project that I set out to make. Admittedly, the final project is not that far off from what I first planned on doing, but the process that it took to get me here was much different than what I thought it would be. 

 

My plan was to write something that I could use in my graduate school applications, which meant that I needed to find an English text to analyze. When trying to figure out what I was most interested in, I kept returning to the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. This was a major uprising that occurred in medieval England and is often recognized as the first great popular rebellion in English history. As the due date for my project proposal was approaching, I found myself pressed for time and unable to narrow my focus down further. On a whim, I decided to focus on a handful of letters that were written by some of the leaders of this rebellion. I figured that I would just submit the proposal and figure the rest out later, so I outlined my desire to explore what these letters have to teach us about the rebellion, and about the rebels themselves. I would do all of that while simultaneously making the study of the rebellion more accessible to the general public. 

 

That isn’t quite what ended up happening. 

 

I thought I knew what I was getting into, and I was pretty confident that I could do it. But what I was trying to prove quickly grew much bigger than I anticipated.

 

Each and every one of my assumptions was almost immediately thrown into question as I began working on my project. Sure, I knew how to analyze the letters and use my analysis to prove an argument; I’ve only been doing that for my entire academic experience. But who exactly did I think I was, telling other people what the letters meant as though I was the one who had written them? Why did I think I had the power to determine exactly what the letters did and did not accomplish? How, exactly, did I expect myself to come to some definitive answer to any of the questions that I was posing? 

 

Every time I thought I got a handle on this project, that control would inevitably slip away from me. I felt like I had no idea what I was doing and kept questioning who gave me the authority to write about any of it. I’m an undergraduate student who hasn’t even earned her bachelor’s degree, and yet I’m out here analyzing these letters and acting as though I’m the one who can answer questions that scholars have been asking long before I was even born. How could I think that I could do any of this?

 

There was no step of this process in which I wasn’t doubting myself. There were weeks when I cried every couple days over how much I was struggling. Fortunately or unfortunately, the more work I put into this project, the more time I spent going down Wikipedia rabbit holes and scouring the sources of academic articles, the more I became convinced that I had to follow through with this project. I had to answer the questions that I posed. I had to prove that I had a right to be contributing to this conversation. I had to get to the bottom of these letters, or else the rebels would haunt me until the day I died (maybe even after—can ghosts haunt other ghosts?). And, you know, it was too late to back out; the deadline for that had long since passed.

 

Let me tell you what the next 9,000 words are going to include. I’ll begin by explaining what preceded me creating this project. After that, I will address the rebellion itself—what caused it and what happened during—and why these letters were written in the first place. Once I’ve established that, I will analyze the letters and all that they have to teach us about the rebels: what did the letters allow them to do? What was the power that the letters gave them? What role does a fictional character play in all of this, and how does he prove useful for the rebels? Did the rebels have some sort of hit list? As I’m doing this, I will also contemplate the role that I have in all of these as a person who studies medieval literature and the shortcomings that I was constantly running into. Is my work valuable if I’m missing some part of the picture? If I’m not supremely confident in everything that I’m writing? If I didn’t get it right?

 

And then—well, I’m getting ahead of myself.