First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This volume makes available to teachers, students, and scholars a convenient selection of the most provocative and influential articles from the past 20 years on Chaucer's afterlife in the 15th century, one of the most dynamic topics in Chaucer studies today. Much recent work in the field of Chaucer studies has shown how our understanding of Chaucer's poetry is mediated by his 15th-century readers and scribes. Increased scholarly interest in various 15th-century Chaucerian poets-notably Hoccleve, Lydgate, and Henryson-has prompted medievalists to read these sometimes neglected poems anew The classic essays in this volume, plus two written just for this collection, investigate the scribes, glossators, and poets whose reception and transmission of Chaucer's writings influence our own reading of them today, focusing chiefly on the Chaucerian influence in their poetry. Written by eminent Chaucer scholars, these essays cover not only a wide range of Chaucer's writings, but also touch on the history of the English language, the glosses to Chaucer's poetry, English and Scottish poets' appropriations of Chaucer, the implicit criticism and interpretations of Chaucer's writings in the 15th century, and the first printing of Chaucer's works by William Caxton Timely and unique, this collection will prove indispensable for research libraries, a convenient and valuable resource for scholars, and an essential introduction for students.

First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Impossible bequests of the soul; an outlawed younger son who rises to become justice of the king's forests; the artificially-preserved corpse of the heir to an empire; a medieval clerk kept awake at night by fears of falling; a seventeenth-century noblewoman who commissions copies upon copies of her genealogy; Elizabethan efforts to eradicate Irish customs of succession; thoughts of the legacy of sin bequeathed to mankind by our first parents, Adam and Eve. This book explores how inheritance was imagined between the lifetimes of Chaucer and Shakespeare. The writing composed during this period was the product of what the historian Georges Duby has called a 'society of heirs', in which inheritance functioned as a key instrument of social reproduction, acting to ensure that existing structures of status, wealth, familial power, political influence, and gender relations were projected from the present into the future. In poetry, prose, and drama--in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and his Canterbury Tales; in Spenser's Faerie Queene; in plays by Shakespeare such as Macbeth, As You Like It, and The Merchant of Venice; and in a host of other works--we encounter a range of texts that attests to the extraordinary imaginative reach of questions of inheritance between the fourteenth and the seventeenth centuries. Moving between the late medieval and early modern periods, Imagining Inheritance examines this body of writing in order to argue that an exploration of the ways in which premodern inheritance was imagined can make legible the deep structures of power that modernity wants to forget.

Challenging the view that the fifteenth century was the "Drab Age" of English literary history, Seth Lerer seeks to recover the late-medieval literary system that defined the canon of Chaucer's work and the canonical approaches to its understanding. Lerer shows how the poets, scribes, and printers of the period constructed Chaucer as the "poet laureate" and "father" of English verse. Chaucer appears throughout the fifteenth century as an adviser to kings and master of technique, and Lerer reveals the patterns of subjection, childishness, and inability that characterize the stance of Chaucer's imitators and his readers. In figures from the Canterbury Tales such as the abused Clerk, the boyish Squire, and the infantilized narrator of the "Tale of Sir Thopas," in the excuse-ridden narrator of Troilus and Criseyde, and in Chaucer's cursed Adam Scriveyn, the poet's inheritors found their oppressed personae. Through close readings of poetry from Lydgate to Skelton, detailed analysis of manuscript anthologies and early printed books, and inquiries into the political environments and the social contexts of bookmaking, Lerer charts the construction of a Chaucer unassailable in rhetorical prowess and political sanction, a Chaucer aureate and laureate.

This handbook addresses Chaucer's poetry in the context of several disciplines, including late medieval philosophy and science, Mediterranean culture, comparative European literature, vernacular theology and popular devotion.

Fama, or fame, is a central concern of late medieval literature. Where fame came from, who deserved it, whether it was desirable, how it was acquired and kept were significant inquiries for a culture that relied extensively on personal credit and reputation. An interest in fame was not new, being inherited from the classical world, but was renewed and rethought within the vernacular revolutions of the later Middle Ages. The work of Geoffrey Chaucer shows a preoccupation with ideas on the subject of fama, not only those received from the classical world but also those of his near contemporaries; via an engagement with their texts, he aimed to negotiate a place for his own work in the literary canon, establishing fame as the subject-site at which literary theory was contested and writerly reputation won. Chaucer's place in these negotiations was readily recognized in his aftermath, as later writers adopted and reworked postures which Chaucer had struck, in their own bids for literary place. This volume considers the debates on fama which were past, present and future to Chaucer, using his work as a centre point to investigate canon formation in European literature from the late Middle Ages and into the Early Modern period. Isabel Davis is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Literature at Birkbeck, University of London; Catherine Nall is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London. Contributors: Joanna Bellis, Alcuin Blamires, Julia Boffey, Isabel Davis, Stephanie Downes, A.S.G. Edwards, Jamie C. Fumo, Andrew Galloway, Nick Havely, Thomas A. Prendergast, Mike Rodman Jones, William T. Rossiter, Elizaveta Strakhov.

This book examines the scholarly construction of Geoffrey Chaucer in different historical eras, and challenges long-standing assumptions to enhance the theoretical dialogue on Chaucer's historical reception.

Praised by reviewers as highly recommended, indispensable, and thorough, comprehensive, usable, and unquestionably useful, theChaucer Name Dictionary is the ultimate A-Z guide to the writer who stands at the head of the English curriculum. It provides full information on all the hundreds of proper names mentioned throughout Chaucer and essential to an understanding of his works. Each entry provides historical and/or literary definition, references to occurrences in Chaucer's works with explanations of the context, a list of related words, etymology, and a bibliography of primary and secondary works. Special Features The only reference source that identifies the hundreds of historical, literary, and mythological names mentioned in Chaucer, Provides reliable background information essential to understanding Chaucer's text, Alphabetical arrangement and clear format allow quick answers to reference questions, Includes an important Glossary of Astronomical and Astrological Terms, along with six astrological maps Suitable for courses in:Chaucer, Medieval English Poetry, Medieval Literature in Translation, Old and Middle English Literature, Glossary Also includes maps.