MAPPING THE COMMUNAL IDEOLOGY OF THE POOR: CARNIVALESQUE TECHNIQUES OF SUBVERSION IN THOMAS DELONEY’S JACK OF NEWBURY

Abstract

Central to this paper will be the concept of social mobility and the problematisation of traditional Christian moral values in England in the late 1590s. Taking into account the social turbulences of the period, the paper will focus on the communal ideology of the poor as depicted through the eyes of Jack of Newbury, anti-hero of Thomas Deloney’s eponymous narrative. I attempt to communicate how Jack’s manipulative wit is used to deride the official socio-political order of the time. Special attention is paid to the mockery to which the agents of the official order are subjected in the text.