Explores representations of speech in English poetry of the later Middle Ages, proposing that the spoken word, both within Ricardian and Lancastrian poetry and within latemedieval English culture, was understood as an efficacious, powerful medium. Coley examines the work of Chaucer, Gower, Hoccleve, and the anonymous author of St. Erkenwald to show how writers manipulated cultural understandings of speech to engage with the crises that defined the later Middle Ages.