Böcker av Ardis Butterfield

With an insight into the rich cultural canvas of the Middle Ages is granted by a host of texts: liturgical manuals; manuscripts of epic poetry, vernacular lyric, and music; paintings, and many more, this title reveals the two-fold performative nature of such texts: they document, mediate, or prefigure acts of performance.

First entire collection centred on Chaucer's Book of the Duchess, making a compelling case for its importance and value.The Book of the Duchess, Chaucer's first major poem, is foundational for our understanding of Chaucer's literary achievements in relation to late-medieval English textual production; yet in comparison with other works, itstreatment has been somewhat peripheral in previous criticism. This volume, the first full-length collection devoted to the Book, argues powerfully against the prevalent view that it is an underdeveloped or uneven early work, and instead positions it as a nuanced literary and intellectual effort in its own right, one that deserves fuller integration with twenty-first-century Chaucer studies. The essays within it pursue lingering questions as well as new frontiers in research, including the poem's literary relationships in the sphere of French and English writing, material processes of transmission and compilation, and patterns of reception. Each chapter advances an original reading of the Book of the Duchess that uncovers new aspects of its internal dynamics or of its literary or intellectual contexts. As a whole, the volume reveals the poem's mobility and elasticity within an increasingly international sphere of cultural discourse that thrives on dynamic exchange and encourages sophisticated reflection on authorial practice. Jamie C. Fumo is Professor of English at Florida State University.Contributors: B.S.W. Barootes, Julia Boffey, Ardis Butterfield, Rebecca Davis, A.S.G. Edwards, Jeff Espie, Philip Knox, Helen Phillips, Elizaveta Strakhov, Sara Sturm-Maddox, Marion Wells.

Essays exploring Chaucer's identity as a London poet and the urban context for his writings.

Essays on a variety of topics in late medieval literature, linked by an engagement with form.

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340-1400) is celebrated as the father of English. Demonstrating for the first time that the English language had greatness and legitimacy, Chaucer's role in the rise of England's self-identity was immense. Yet there was more to Chaucer than national wordsmith.