Heated Words: The Politics and Poetics of Work in ‘A Complaint against Blacksmiths’

‘A Complaint against Blacksmiths’, unique to BL, MS Arundel 292, may gesture towards fourteenth-century legislation against night-time work, yet is underpinned by delight in the sights and sounds of the forge. The smith’s smoke-smattered visage is simultaneously disgraceful and inspiring to its medieval audience. Many of us experience a different kind of unease in the digital age, as hours are converted into immaterial goods. For many, the clamour of physical labour has been replaced by the noise of automation. Looking back into the forge, the modern urban worker may yearn for its sonic landscape, with clattering hammers, grunting mouths, and hissing waters.