Heresy and late medieval literary studies have been inseparable bedfellows for some time. It can seem as though Lollardy (or ‘Lollardy’ as this study has it) is the interpretative centre to which all other concerns must be subordinate. Andrew Cole sees the field rather differently, arguing that the relationship between heresy and literature has cooled and needs spicing up again. Addressing the familiar writings of the canonical authors Langland, Chaucer, Hoccleve, Lydgate and Kempe, this book is a collection of articles (three of which have appeared before) that seeks to make heresy central to their interpretation. The book is worth reading for Cole's exploration of the idea that responses to Wycliffism were not limited to the drearily partisan, but filled such a wide spectrum as to necessitate a reassessment of the nature (if not the extent) of heresy's impact on late medieval culture. In their various ways the authors studied here incorporated into their work things that they found interesting in Wycliffism, particularly translation theory, anti-mendicancy and religious zeal. Cole finds little sign of the self-censorship or clampdown on vernacular writing proposed in 1995 by Nicholas Watson, but instead sees creative responses to both heresy and anti-heretical measures in the literature of the period. This is a very fruitful and interesting approach, and Cole's analysis is based on new close readings of the texts. Some readers may, however, find some of Cole's arguments unpersuasive, and his mode of argumentation a little wearing. In terms of substance one would have to take issue with his unremitting portrayal of the medieval Church as conspiratorial, and his belief that all references to canon law and the church courts in literature refer to the 1382 Blackfriars Council. Too much Dan Brown for my taste, but every story needs a villain. One would also have wished for a more nuanced reading of the church records introduced at various points. Cole makes much of the absence of certain documents from episcopal registers (Where is the record of Margery Kempe's audience with Repingdon? Where the certification of Wykeham's prosecution of Hampshire Wycliffites?), attributing their suppression to the malign agency of whichever churchman his argument demands. Listening for the dog that does not bark is a good instinct, but allowing oneself to imagine the character and motivation of the ghostly dog on the strength of its silence is too much for historians. Cole's laudable aim is to tease out the clearly very interesting responses of his chosen authors to Wycliffism, making them even more interesting and three-dimensional, but this is done at the cost of caricaturing other historical figures. Critics and historians are also caricatured, their positions exaggerated as dragons to be slain, and the lone voice magnified into a pernicious ‘general view’ to be exposed as inadequate. In a crowded academic field this style of writing may be inevitable, but it is wearying. Such criticisms are, however, perhaps uncharitably made against a book which, the author tells us, corrects so many misconceptions, offering ‘the only complete historical account of the first official condemnation of Wycliffism’, making ‘an historical point long overdue in the scholarship’, and modestly offering ‘what has long been needed’.