Chaucer+his Readers

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. 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. His central claim is 'that Chaucer--as author, as laureate, and as father of English poetry--is a construction of his later fifteenth-century scribes, readers, and poetic imitators.' This claim 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.--Derek Pearsall, Yearbook of English StudiesLerer, Seth is the author of 'Chaucer+his Readers' with ISBN 9780691068114 and ISBN 0691068119.