Revolution of the Dead

From the chaos of the Black Death comes creative renewal; survivors finding their voice through satire and a revived literature in English, including breakthrough works by women, and through new craft in cathedral building and stained glass.

The works explored include Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, William Langland's angry satire The Vision Of Piers Plowman, and breakthrough works by women like the pilgrim Margery Kempe.

Poet Laureate Simon Armitage reflects on the poem of loss, Pearl, as a window into the medieval mind; artist Sarah Maple shines a light on the subversive Lincoln Cathedral misericords carved in the wake of plague and writer Maria Fusco explores how the profound faith of female mystic Julian of Norwich is unshaken by illness.

The episode also looks at how tensions rose over taxes on the plague's survivors with the Peasants' Revolt, triggering a counter-reaction from Richard II. Royal photographer Chris Levine dissects the first portrait of a living English king and artist Marc Quinn explores the beautiful but enigmatic Wilton Diptych. This was also a moment of new imagination and new opportunities in cathedral building and music, as people increasingly sought fortunes and patrons in towns and cities. Sarah Brown of the York Glaziers Trust shows the recently restored Great East Window at York Minster and Rory McCleery and the Marian Consort perform John Dunstaple's Veni Sancte Spiritus.