Chaucer and the Subversion of Form (Paperback)

Thomas A. Prendergast

ISBN 10: 131664412X / ISBN 13: 9781316644126

Published by Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2021

About this Item

Paperback. Responding to the lively resurgence of literary formalism, this volume delivers a timely and fresh exploration of the works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Advancing 'new formalist' approaches, medieval scholars have begun to ask what happens when structure fails to yield meaning, probing the very limits of poetic organization. While Chaucer is acknowledged as a master of form, his work also foregrounds troubling questions about formal agency: the disparate forces of narrative and poetic practice, readerly reception, intertextuality, genre, scribal attention, patronage, and historical change. This definitive collection of essays offers diverse perspectives on Chaucer and a varied analysis of these problems, asking what happens when form is resisted by author or reader, when it fails by accident or by design, and how it can be misleading, errant, or even dangerous. This exploration of literary form in the works of Geoffrey Chaucer delivers a timely and fresh approach to the study of one of the best known medieval English poets. This definitive collection of essays offers a variety of approaches to Chaucer and to the analysis of form. This item is printed on demand. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9781316644126

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Chaucer and the Subversion of Form (Paperback)
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
• Publication Date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 131664412X
• ISBN 13: 9781316644126
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

Responding to the lively resurgence of literary formalism, this volume delivers a timely and fresh exploration of the works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Advancing 'new formalist' approaches, medieval scholars have begun to ask what happens when structure fails to yield meaning, probing the very limits of poetic organization. While Chaucer is acknowledged as a master of form, his work also foregrounds troubling questions about formal agency: the disparate forces of narrative and poetic practice, readerly reception, intertextuality, genre, scribal attention, patronage, and historical change. This definitive collection of essays offers diverse perspectives on Chaucer and a varied analysis of these problems, asking what happens when form is resisted by author or reader, when it fails by accident or by design, and how it can be misleading, errant, or even dangerous.

About the Authors

Thomas A. Prendergast is Professor of English at the College of Wooster, Ohio. He is the author of Chaucer's Dead Body: From Corpse to Corpus (2004) and Poetical Dust: Poets' Corner and the Making of Britain (2015); he is co-editor of Rewriting Chaucer: Culture, Authority, and the Idea of the Authentic Text, 1400–1602 (1999).

Jessica Rosenfeld is Associate Professor of English at Washington University, St. Louis. She is the author of Ethics and Enjoyment in Late Medieval Poetry: Love after Aristotle (Cambridge, 2011).