The claim that More wrote several letters from the Tower with a coal may be taken literally, or as an image of powerlessness, or as a reference to Isaiah’s lips touched with a coal by an angel. The coal is an index of how technologies of writing and reports of speaking inform the Tower letters and those surrounding them. The letter to Frith plays upon the difference between heretical textuality and the simple truth of a Christian woman at prayer, as does the letter to Cromwell concerning More’s …
Read moreThe claim that More wrote several letters from the Tower with a coal may be taken literally, or as an image of powerlessness, or as a reference to Isaiah’s lips touched with a coal by an angel. The coal is an index of how technologies of writing and reports of speaking inform the Tower letters and those surrounding them. The letter to Frith plays upon the difference between heretical textuality and the simple truth of a Christian woman at prayer, as does the letter to Cromwell concerning More’s knowledge of Elizabeth Barton and the exploration of the difference between evidence and hearsay. The scandal of authorship in Margaret Roper’s letter to Alice Alington likewise concerns the play between male and female voices in the text. More’s explication of the fables recited to Lady Alington by Audley emplies out the notion of the author in favor of the voices, male and female, of conscience and love that play out across the written text of the letters the drama of More’s last days.
