Table Of ContentFor 700 years, Geoffrey Chaucer has spoken to scholars Manchester C
and amateurs alike. How does his work speak to us in the Medieval o
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twenty-first century? Within the fluctuating trends of the
literature t
critical moment, this volume provides a unique vantage e
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point for responding to this question, furnished by the and culture
signature intellectual framework of pioneering medieval p
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literature scholar Stephanie Trigg: the symptomatic long
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history. a
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While Trigg’s scholarship acts as a springboard for the
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vibrant conversations in this collection, each chapter
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offers an inspiring extension of her legacy. The outstanding a
contributors delve into a diverse range of subjects that u
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frequently cross boundaries. Formerly rigid demarcations
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surrounding medieval literary studies give way to an r
increasingly fluid interplay between Chaucer within his a
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medieval context; medievalism and ‘reception’; the rigours
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of scholarly research and the recognition of amateur o
s
engagement with the past; the significance of the history s
of emotions; and the connection between textuality, t
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subjectivity and the world they inhabit.
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Each chapter engages with one or more of these themes, c
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providing a distinctive and often startling interpretation n
of Chaucer that broadens our understanding of the t
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dynamic relationship between the medieval past and its
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ongoing re-evaluation. The inventive strategies employed ie
in this volume will stimulate exciting and timely insights s
for researchers and students of Chaucer, medievalism,
medieval studies, and the history of emotions, especially
those interested in interdisciplinary approaches to the AH
relationship between medieval literature, the intervening ni
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d
centuries and contemporary cultural change. k
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Helen M. Hickey, Anne McKendry and Melissa Raine are Research Ay,
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Associates at the University of Melbourne nM
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(E kE Chaucer across
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the centuries
Front cover— ISBN 978-1-5261-2915-4
Edward Coley Burne-Jones
(designer) and William Morris
(painter), tile depicting Dante
Gabriel Rossetti as the poet
Geoffrey Chaucer reading, 1863
(Photo by © Historical Picture
EditEd by HElEn M. HickEy,
Archive/CORBIS/Corbis via
9 781526 129154
www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk Getty Images) AnnE MckEndry And MElissA rAinE
HICK532_PPC.indd 1 25/09/2018 12:44
sanctity and pornography
CONTEMPORARY CHAUCER
AinC RmOeSdSi eTvHaEl CcEuNltTuUrReIES
Series editors: Anke Bernau, David Matthews and
James Paz
Series founded by: J. J. Anderson and Gail Ashton
Advisory board: Ruth Evans, Patricia C. Ingham,
Andrew James Johnston, Chris Jones, Catherine
Karkov, Nicola McDonald, Sarah Salih, Larry
Scanlon and Stephanie Trigg
Founding series editors j. j. anderson, gail ashton
Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture publishes monogTrhais psehriess ais nbrdoa de isn sscaoype canodl lreeccepttiivoe ntos in novation, bringing together a variety of
approaches. It is intended to include monographs, collections of commissioned essays,
comprising new research informed by current critical meatnhd oedditoionlos agnide/osr troannsl attiohnes ofl itetxetsr, awrityh a focus on English and English-related
cultures of the Middle Ages. We are interested in all periods,li tferraotumre a ntdh ceul teurae.r Itl yem Mbraicdesd mleed ieAvagl wersiti ngs of many different kinds (imaginative,
historical, political, scientific, religious) as well as post-medieval treatments of medieval
through to the late, and we include post-medieval engagemmaetenriatl.s A nw imitphor taantn adim orfe thper seersiees ins tthaa-t contributions to it should be written in a
style which is accessible to a wide range of readers.
tions of the medieval period (or ‘medievalism’). ‘Literature’ is taken in a broad sense, to
include the many different medieval genres: imaginative, hiaslretaodyr picubalislh, edpolitical, scientific,
Language and imagination in the Gawain-poems
religious. While we welcome contributions on the diverse cJ. uJ. lAtnuderresosn of medieval Britain
and are happy to receive submissions on Anglo-Norman, WAantegr alnod -fiLrea: Tthien m yathn odf t hCe Felolotdi cin Awngrloi-tS-axon England
Daniel Anlezark
ings, we are also open to work on the Middle Ages in Europe more widely, and beyond.
The Parlement of Foulys (by Geoffrey Chaucer)
D. S. Brewer (ed.)
Titles Available in the Series Greenery: Ecocritical readings of late medieval English literature
Gillian Rudd
11. Reading Robin Hood: Content, form and reception in the outlaw myth
Stephen Knight
12. Annotated Chaucer bibliography: 1997–2010
Mark Allen and Stephanie Amsel
13. Roadworks: Medieval Britain, medieval roads
Valerie Allen and Ruth Evans (eds)
14. Love, history and emotion in Chaucer and Shakespeare: Troilus and Criseyde and
Troilus and Cressida
Andrew James Johnston, Russell West-Pavlov and Elisabeth Kempf (eds)
15. The Scottish Legendary: Towards a poetics of hagiographic narration
Eva von Contzen
16. Nonhuman voices in Anglo-Saxon literature and material culture
James Paz
17. The church as sacred space in Middle English literature and culture
Laura Varnam
18. Aspects of knowledge: Preserving and reinventing traditions of learning
in the Middle Ages
Marilina Cesario and Hugh Magennis (eds)
19. Visions and ruins: Cultural memory and the untimely Middle Ages
Joshua Davies
20. Participatory reading in late-medieval England
Heather Blatt
21. Affective medievalism: Love, abjection and discontent
Thomas A. Prendergast and Stephanie Trigg
22. The politics of Middle English parables: Fiction, theology, and social practice
Mary Raschko
23. Performing women: Gender, self, and representation in late-medieval Metz
Susannah Crowder
24. Contemporary Chaucer across the centuries
Helen M. Hickey, Anne McKendry and Melissa Raine (eds)
Contemporary Chaucer across
the centuries
Essays for Stephanie Trigg
Edited by
HELEN M. HICKEY, ANNE McKENDRY
AND MELISSA RAINE
Manchester University Press
Copyright © Manchester University Press 2018
While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University
Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no
chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in
writing of both author and publisher.
Published by Manchester University Press
Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA
www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 5261 2915 4 hardback
First published 2018
The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for
any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does
not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or
appropriate.
Typeset by
Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire
Contents
List of plates vii
Notes on contributors ix
Acknowledgements xiv
Introduction 1
Helen M. Hickey, Anne McKendry and Melissa Raine
1 Identifying, and identifying with, Chaucer 14
Paul Strohm
2 F irst encounter: ‘snail-horn perception’ in Chaucer’s
Troilus and Criseyde 24
Elizabeth Robertson
3 Sir Thopas’s mourning maidens 42
Helen Cooper
4 Chaucerian rhyme-breaking 56
Ruth Evans
5 ‘Have ye nat seyn somtyme a pale face?’ 74
Stephanie Downes
6 Heavy atmosphere 91
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen
7 H unting and fortune in the Book of the Duchess and Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight 109
Frank Grady
8 T he implausible plausibility of the Prologue to the Tale
of Beryn 125
Thomas A. Prendergast
9 Caxton in the middle of English 138
David Matthews
10 ‘ Hail graybeard bard’: Chaucer in the nineteenth-
century popular consciousness 153
Stephen Knight
vi Contents
11 Chaucer as Catholic child in nineteenth-century
English reception 172
Andrew Lynch
12 Flesh and stone: William Morris’s News from Nowhere
and Chaucer’s dream visions 188
John M. Ganim
13 ‘In remembrance of his persone’: transhistorical
empathy and the Chaucerian face 201
Louise D’Arcens
14 Textual face: cognition as recognition 218
James Simpson
Bibliography 234
Index 257
Plates
Plates can be found between pages 130 and 131.
1 B runetto Latini, ‘World’, Li Livres dou Tresor, c.1325,
London, British Library, MS Yates Thompson 19, fol. 40
(copyright: The British Library Board)
2 Brunetto Latini, ‘Four elements’, Li Livres dou Tresor,
c.1325, London, British Library, MS Yates Thompson 19,
fol. 28, detail (copyright: The British Library Board)
3 Macrobius, ‘The five zones of the earth’, Commentarii in
somnium Scipionis, c.1150, Copenhagen, Royal Danish
Library (Det Kongelige Bibliotek) MS NkS 218 4˚, fol. 34r,
detail (reproduced under a CC BY-NC-ND licence)
4 Prologue to the Tale of Beryn, c.1450–1500, Alnwick Castle,
Northumberland MS 455, fol. 180r, detail (copyright: Duke
of Northumberland)
5 Tale of Beryn, c.1450–1500, Alnwick Castle,
Northumberland MS 455, fol. 190r, detail (copyright:
Duke of Northumberland)
6 T homas Stothard, The pilgrimage to Canterbury, 1806–07
(copyright: Tate, London 2018)
7 W illiam Blake, Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims, 1810–20
(copyright: The Trustees of the British Museum)
8 S ir Edwin Landseer, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert at the
Bal Costumé of 12 May 1842, c.1842–46 (copyright: Royal
Collection Trust / Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017)
9 ‘Ypunctured privilie with sharpe sper ye miller’s tyer’ from
‘Ye Canterburie pilgrymage (ye real thynge)’, Cycling: An
Illustrated Weekly [London], 10 April 1897, pp. 287–8,
detail (reproduced by permission of the National Library of
Scotland)
10 William Morris, ‘Frontispiece’, News from Nowhere,
viii List of Plates
Hammersmith: Kelmscott, 1892. London, British Library,
Shelfmark: C.43.e.9 (copyright: The British Library Board)
11 Thomas Hoccleve, ‘Chaucer’, De Regimine Principum,
c.1411–25, London, British Library, MS Harley 4866, fol.
88r., detail (copyright: The British Library Board)
12 Bill Bailey, ‘Pubbe gagge’, still from live TV studio version,
c.2001, www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNEWatD0viw&t=11s
13 Joseph Jastrow, ‘Rabbit duck illusion’, Harper’s Weekly, 19
November 1892, p. 1114, detail (reproduced by permission
of the State Library of Victoria)
Contributors
JEFFREY JEROME COHEN is Dean of Humanities at Arizona
State University in Tempe and co-president of the Association for
the Study of Literature and the Environment. His research exam-
ines strange and beautiful things that challenge the imagination,
phenomena that seem alien and intimate at once. He is especially
interested in what monsters, inhuman forces, and objects and
matter that won’t stay put reveal about the cultures that dream,
fear and desire them. Cohen is widely published in the fields of
medieval studies, monster theory, posthumanism and ecocriti-
cism. His book Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman (University of
Minnesota Press, 2015) won the René Wellek Prize in Comparative
Literature for 2017.
HELEN COOPER is Professor Emeritus of Medieval and
Renaissance English at the University of Cambridge, a Life
Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and an Honorary
Fellow of University College, Oxford. Her books include Pastoral:
Mediaeval into Renaissance (D. S. Brewer, 1977); The Structure
of the Canterbury Tales (Duckworth, 1983); Oxford Guides to
Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales (Oxford University Press, 1996);
The English Romance in Time (Oxford University Press, 2004);
Shakespeare and the Medieval World (Bloomsbury, 2010); and the
Oxford World’s Classics edition of Malory’s Le Morte Darthur
(Oxford University Press, 1998, 2008). She has also written
numerous articles on medieval and early modern topics.
LOUISE D’ARCENS is Professor in the Department of English at
Macquarie University. Her publications include the books Old Songs
in the Timeless Land: Medievalism in Australian Literature 1840–
1910 (Brepols / University of Western Australia Press, 2011), Comic
Medievalism: Laughing at the Middle Ages (D. S. Brewer, 2014),
