The Shaping of English Poetry: Essays on 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight', Langland, Chaucer and Spenser

Description

This collection of essays is conceived not as a summary of past endeavours but as the beginning of an attempt to present a sense of the wholeness of a distinctively English literature from Beowulf to Spenser. The native alliterative tradition of England is represented by its final flowering in two essays on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and three on Piers Plowman. The renewal of English letters in the fourteenth century, inspired by continental models in French and Italian, is represented by four essays on Chaucer. The poetic achievement of these three medieval masters remains unmatched until Spenser announces himself in a third great age in the history of English poetry and this is represented by three essays on the first three books of The Faerie Queene. Spenser’s indebtedness to Langland and Chaucer, and his philosophical conservatism in drawing on the thought of Aristotle and the tradition of medieval commentary surrounding the works of Aristotle, ensure that the tradition of English poetry in the Renaissance is securely rooted in its medieval inheritance. Contents Preface vii 1 The Significance of the Pentangle Symbolism in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 1 2 The Action of the Hunting and Bedroom Scenes in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 39 3 The Meaning of Kind Wit, Conscience and Reason in the First Vision of Piers Plowman 63 4 Langland’s Conception of Favel, Guile, Liar and False in the First Vision of Piers Plowman 75 5 The Status and Meaning of Meed in the First Vision of Piers Plowman 87 6 The Universality of the Portraits in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales 109 7 Rhetorical Perspectives in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales 129 8 A Defence of Dorigen’s Complaint 147 9 The Self-Revealing Tendencies of Chaucer’s Pardoner 173 10 Holiness as the First of Spenser’s Aristotelian Moral Virtues 197 11 The Idea of Temperance in the Second Book of The Faerie Queene 231 12 The Meaning of Spenser’s Chastity as the Fairest of Virtues 267 Index 293