The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer

Description

As the 'father' of the English literary canon, one of a very few writers to appear in every 'great books' syllabus, Chaucer is seen as an author whose works are fundamentally timeless: an author who, like Shakespeare, exemplifies the almost magical power of poetry to appeal to each generation of readers. Every age remakes its own Chaucer, developing new understandings of how his poetry intersects with contemporary ways of seeing the world, and the place of the subject who lives in it. This Handbook comprises a series of essays by established scholars and emerging voices that address Chaucer's poetry in the context of several disciplines, including late medieval philosophy and science, Mediterranean Studies, comparative literature, vernacular theology, and popular devotion. The volume paints the field in broad strokes and sections include Biography and Circumstances of Daily Life; Chaucer in the European Frame; Philosophy and Science in the Universities; Christian Doctrine and Religious Heterodoxy; and the Chaucerian Afterlife. Taken as a whole, The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer offers a snapshot of the current state of the field, and a bold suggestion of the trajectories along which Chaucer studies are likely to develop in the future. Cover CHAUCER Copyright Contents List of Figures Note on the Text and List of Abbreviations Notes on Contributors Introduction: Placing the Past Notes PART I: BIOGRAPHY AND CIRCUMSTANCES OF DAILY LIFE Chapter 1 Chaucer’s Travels for the Court Bibliography Chapter 2 Chaucer and Contemporary Courts of Law and Politics Dreams of court House and law Game Notes Bibliography Chapter 3 At Home and in the‘Countour-Hous’: Chaucer’s Polyglot Dwellings Writing on the wall: Chaucerian traces Home and abroad: aquatic Chaucer Conclusion: inhabiting languages Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography Chapter 4 Labour and Time Reckoning labouring bodies in feudal time Disposition and artisan labour Regulating religious labour and producing ecclesiastical bodies Notes Bibliography Chapter 5 Books and Booklessness in Chaucer’s England The matter of medieval booklessness Chaucer’s books Notes Bibliography Chapter 6 The Role of the Scribe: Genius of the Book Alan’s Genius: scribe and priest and scribe as priest The scribe as agent and companion of a text’s birth The scribe as go-between, guide, and author’s other self Author, scribe, and the true object of literary study Notes Bibliography Chapter 7 Gaufred, deere maister soverain’: Chaucer and Rhetoric Rhetoric and its reception in Chaucer studies Rhetorical treatises and their parts 1. Invention: poetic conception 2. Ordering poetic material 3. Shaping poetic material (amplification and abbreviation of material) 4. Ornaments of style (tropes and schemes) 5. Memory and delivery Conclusion Notes Bibliography PART II: CHAUCER IN THE MEDITERRANEAN FRAME Chapter 8 Anti-Judaism/Anti-Semitism and the Structures of Chaucerian Thought ‘The fame of the Jewerye’: Chaucer’s Jewish matter Temporality Metaphysics Spatiality Conclusion Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography Chapter 9 ‘O Hebraic People!’: English Jews and the Twelfth-Century Literary Scene Notes Bibliography Chapter 10 The Hazards of Narration: Frame-Tale Technologies and the ‘Oriental Tale’ Frame’ tales Framed narratives in motion Stories that save lives Framed narratives in Italy Notes Bibliography Chapter 11 Fictions of Espionage: Performing Pilgrim and Crusader Identities in the Age of Chaucer Pilgrimage’s detractors and the crimes of curiositas Comparing the fourteenth-century pilgrim sources Simon Simeonis (1323) Thomas Brygg (1392) The rewards of pilgrimage and crusade Notes Bibliography PART III: CHAUCER IN THE EUROPEAN FRAME Chapter 12 Ovid: Artistic Identity and Intertextuality Temporalities Ovidianisms Textualities Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography Chapter 13 Chaucer and the Textualities of Troy Notes Bibliography Chapter 14 The Romance of the Rose: Allegory and Lyric Voice Notes Bibliography Chapter 15 Challenging the Patronage Paradigm: Late-Medieval Francophone Writers and the Poet-Prince Relationship Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography Chapter 16 Dante and the Author of the Decameron: Love, Literature, and Authority in Boccaccio The Lustful (Inferno 5) in the Preface and Introduction to the First Day The terrace of lust (Purgatorio 26 to 30) in the Introduction to the Fourth Day: the montanaro and the making of a literary community The Heaven of Venus in the Author’s Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter 17 Boccaccio’s Early Romances Il Filostrato/The Troilus Il Teseida/The Knight’s Tale Chaucer’s use of the Teseida Notes Bibliography Chapter 18 Chaucer’s Petrarch: ‘enlumyned ben they’ Notes Bibliography Chapter 19 Dante and the Medieval City: How the Dead Live Notes Bibliography Chapter 20 Historiography: Nicholas Trevet’s Transnational History The river of time Language and nation Notes Bibliography PART IV: PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE IN THE UNIVERSITIES Chapter 21 Grammar and Rhetoric c.1100–c.1400 Grammatical study in the twelfth century Rhetorical study in the twelfth century Transitional developments Grammar after the twelfth century Rhetoric after the twelfth century Grammar and rhetoric in fourteenth-century England Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter 22 Philosophy, Logic, and Nominalism English philosophy in the fourteenth century Nominalism and realism Human Freedom and Action Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter 23 The Poetics of Trespass and Duress: Chaucer and the Fifth Inn of Court Notes Bibliography Chapter 24 Medicine and Science in Chaucer’s Day Appendix A Note on the Manuscripts of Henry Daniel Bibliography Chapter 25: Logic and Mathematics: The Oxford Calculators The ideas and methods of the Oxford Calculators, narrowly and broadly construed The relation of Chaucer to the Oxford Calculators Notes Bibliography PART V: CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE AND RELIGIOUS HETERODOXY Chapter 26 Wycliffism and its After-Effects The structure and context of Wycliffism Wycliffism as a moral theology The Christian life Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter 27 ‘Anticlericalism’, Inter-Clerical Polemic and Theological Vernaculars The background (Kathryn Kerby-Fulton) Chaucer and inter-clerical polemic (Melissa Mayus) Theological translations: a case study of Chaucer, the Second Nun, and St Cecilia (Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis) Notes Bibliography Chapter 28 Chaucer as Image-Maker A learned code of response From parish to shrine: the business of pilgrimage Image-bearing pilgrims Relics in motion: The Pardoner’s Prologue The hermeneutics of image veneration restored Notes Bibliography PART VI: THE CHAUCERIAN AFTERLIFE Chapter 29 Geographesis, or the Afterlife of Britainin Chaucer Islands and remembrance Olde dayes and fairy mounds Rocks that do not vanish Notes Bibliography Chapter 30 Vernacular Authorship and Public Poetry: John Gower Authorship, public and didactic Gower’s vox populi: lay identity and agency Poetry ‘in oure Englissh’: what is it? Notes Bibliography Chapter 31 Lydgate’s Chaucer Chaucer as auctor: the contours of Lydgatean homage Chaucerian occasion and non-event: Lydgate’s Siege of Thebes Lydgate and the Chaucerian inheritance Notes Bibliography Chapter 32 Dialogism in Hoccleve Career and works Modes of dialogue: genre and situation Poetic persona ‘Communynge’: therapeutic dialogue Notes Bibliography Chapter 33 Old Books and New Beginnings North of Chaucer:R evisionary Reframings in The Kingis Quair and The Testament of Cresseid Long shadow, bright shade, and richly instructive corpus Recycling ‘north northward’ on fortunys quhele: Chaucerian reframings in The Kingis Quair ‘The northin wind ha[s] purifyit the air’: reopening closure in The Testament of Cresseid Notes Bibliography Index