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.
Suzanne Conklin Akbari: Introduction: Placing the Past art 1: Biography and Circumstances of Daily Life 1: Peter Brown: Chaucer's Travels for the Court 2: Matthew Giancarlo: Chaucer and Contemporary Courts of Law and Politics: House, Law, Game 3: Jonathan Hsy: At Home in the 'Countour-Hous': Inhabiting Space on Chaucer's Polyglot Dwellings 4: Kellie Robertson: Labour and Time 5: Alexandra Gillespie: Books and Booklessness in Chaucer's England 6: Martha Rust: The Role of the Scribe: Genius of the Book 7: James Simpson: 'Gaufred, deere maister soverain': Chaucer and Rhetoric · Part 2: Chaucer in the Mediterranean Frame 8: Steven F. Kruger: Anti-Judaism / Anti-Semitism and the Structures of Chaucerian Thought 9: Ruth Nisse: 'O Hebraic People!' English Jews and the Twelfth-Century Literary Scene 10: Karla Mallette: The Hazards of Narration: Frame-Tale Technologies and the Oriental Tale 11: Suzanne M. Yeager: Fictions of Espionage: Performing Pilgrim and Crusader Identities in the Age of Chaucer · Part 3: Chaucer in the European Frame 12: Jamie C. Fumo: Ovid: Artistic Identity and Intertextuality 13: Marilynn Desmond: Chaucer and the Textualities of Troy 14: David F. Hult: The Romance of the Rose: Allegory and Lyric Voice 15: Deborah McGrady: Challenging the Patronage Paradigm: Late-Medieval Francophone Writers and the Poet-Prince Relationship 16: Martin Eisner: Dante and the Author of the Decameron: Love, Literature, and Authority in Boccaccio 17: Warren Ginsberg: Boccaccio's Early Romances 18: Ronald Martinez: Chaucer's Petrarch: 'enlumnyed ben they' 19: David L. Pike: Dante and the Medieval City: How the Dead Live 20: Suzanne Conklin Akbari: Historiography: Nicholas Trevet's Transnational History · Part 4: Philosophy and Science in the Universities 21: Rita Copeland: Grammar and Rhetoric c. 1100-c. 1400 22: Fabienne Michelet and Martin Pickavé: Philosophy, Logic, and Nominalism 23: Eleanor Johnson: The Poetics of Trespass and Duress: Chaucer and the Fifth Inn of Court, 24: E. Ruth Harvey: Medicine and Science in Chaucer's Day 25: Edith Dudley Sylla: Logic and Mathematics. The Oxford Calculators · Part 5: Christian Doctrine and Religious Heterodoxy 26: Stephen E. Lahey: Wycliffism and its After-Effects 27: o Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Melissa Mayus, and Katie Bugyis: Anticlericalism', Inter-clerical Polemic and Theological Vernaculars 28: Denise Despres: Chaucer as Image-Maker · Part 6: The Chaucerian Afterlife 29: Jeffrey Jerome Cohen: Geographesis, or the Afterlife of Britain in Chaucer 30: T. Matthew N. McCabe: Vernacular Authorship and Public Poetry: John Gower 31: Anthony Bale: Lydgate's Chaucer 32: Jonathan Newman: Dialogism in Hoccleve 33: Iain MacLeod Higgins: Old Books and New Beginnings North of Chaucer: Revisionary Reframings in the Kingis Quair and the Testament of Cresseid
Suzanne Conklin Akbari is Medieval Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, and was educated at Johns Hopkins and Columbia. She has written books on optics and allegory (Seeing Through the Veil) and European views of Islam and the Orient (Idols in the East), and edited collections on travel literature (Marco Polo), Mediterranean Studies (A Sea of Languages), and somatic histories (The Ends of the Body). James Simpson is Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English at Harvard University. He was formerly Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at the University of Cambridge. His most recent books are Reform and Cultural Revolution, being volume 2 in the Oxford English Literary History (Oxford University Press, 2002); Burning to Read: English Fundamentalism and its Reformation Opponents (Harvard University Press, 2007), and Under the Hammer: Iconoclasm in the Anglo-American Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2010).
Reviews for The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer
The coverage here is impressive, the scholarship is superb, and the volume as a whole provides a valuable vista onto the state of Chaucer studies right now that will offer a starting point for the next generation of scholars. * Jennifer Sisk, Modern Philology * This handbook is a monumental achievement that will guide scholarship in Chaucer and late Middle English literary studies for a generation. With thirty-two chapters, the volume organizes different kinds of knowledge that a reader, teacher, or scholar of Chaucer will find indispensable. * Holly A. Crocker, The Medieval Review * We have a range of perspectives on some of the issues that are now central to the field of Chaucer studies and to the discipline of English more generally, including national or ethnic identities, religious diff erence, bodily diversity, and race ... While some essays are intended for student readers, others providing context to fill in aspects of the late medieval background will be appreciated by specialists. * Roger Kojecky, The Glass *
