Description
Book SynopsisChallenges the view that the fifteenth century was the 'Drab Age' of English literary history. This book seeks to recover the late-medieval literary system that defined the canon of Chaucer's work and the canonical approaches to its understanding. It shows how the poets, and scribes constructed Chaucer as the 'poet laureate'
Trade ReviewWinner of the 1995 Beatrice White Award, English Association "A brilliant reassessment of the Chaucerian tradition during the fifteenth century... Described as 'a book about endings,' in which Chaucer's envoy is construed as the dominant trope in later moments of dedication, closure, and subjection to readerly correction, it is really a book about beginnings--new ways to discuss literary history, the influence of tradition, and the cultural status of the author."--John M. Bowers, Medium Aevum "An excellent book on the reception of Chaucer's writings in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. [Lerer's argument] is pursued with great energy and erudition, and with a subtlety and versatility of argumentative maneuver that make the book very readable as well as enormously rich in suggestion."--Yearbook of English Studies
Table of ContentsList of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsA Note on EditionsList of AbbreviationsIntroduction The Subject of Chaucerian Reception3Ch. 1Writing Like the Clerk: Laureate Poets and the Aureate World22Ch. 2Reading Like the Squire: Chaucer, Lydgate, Clanvowe, and the Fifteenth-Century Anthology57Ch. 3Reading Like a Child: Advisory Aesthetics and Scribal Revision in the Canterbury Tales85Ch. 4The Complaints of Adam Scriveyn: John Shirley and the Canonicity of Chaucer's Short Poems117Ch. 5At Chaucer's Tomb: Laureation and Paternity in Caxton's Criticism147Ch. 6Impressions of Identity: Print, Poetry, and Fame in Hawes and Skelton176Envoy "All this ys said vnder correctyon"209Appendix219Notes223Works Cited285Index303
