Epilogue

This chapter argues that an attunement to extrasemantic experiences of language that is understood in terms of noise lays epistemologies and literacies that effloresced in myriad forms in late medieval England. It reviews impulses to experience and express language as noise, which were a means of cultivating direct access to knowledge through affective and sensory experience. It also reviews the ideas of John Wyclif and his followers that overlapped with the avenues of thought, feeling, and sensation. The chapter investigates how Wyclif and his followers are known for their desire to limit clerical authority by encouraging a deep personal relationship to the biblical word in a way that scholars have suggested was a precursor to the Reformation. It examines the world of echo that emphasized the material qualities of the voice in opposition to the Wycliffite ideal of bodily transcendence.