Chaucerian Conflict

Languages of Antagonism in Late Fourteenth-Century London
Erscheinungsjahr 2007
ISBN: 978-0-19-920789-3
Verlag: OUP Oxford

Buch, Englisch, 224 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 145 mm x 222 mm, Gewicht: 453 g

Chaucerian Conflict explores the textual environment of London in the 1380s and 1390s, revealing a language of betrayal, surveillance, slander, treason, rebellion, flawed idealism, and corrupted compaignyes. Taking a strongly interdisciplinary approach, it examines how discourses about social antagonism work across different kinds of texts written at this time, including Chaucer's House of Fame, Troilus and Criseyde, and Canterbury Tales, and other literary texts such as St Erkenwald, Gower's Vox clamantis, Usk's Testament of Love, and Maidstone's Concordia. Many non-literary texts are also discussed, including the Mercers' Petition, Usk's Appeal, the guild returns, judicial letters, de Mezieres's Letter to Richard II, and chronicle accounts.

These were tumultuous decades in London: some of the conflicts and problems discussed include the Peasants' Revolt, the mayoral rivalries of the 1380s, the Merciless Parliament, slander legislation, and contemporary suspicion of urban associations. While contemporary texts try to hold out hope for the future, or imagine an earlier Golden Age, Chaucer's texts foreground social conflict and antagonism. Though most critics have promoted an idea of Chaucer's texts as essentially socially optimistic and congenial, Marion Turner argues that Chaucer presents a vision of a society that is inevitably divided and destructive.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Turner, Marion

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder England, UK, Irland: Regional & Stadtgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Introduction: Chaucerian Conflict

- 1: Discursive Turbulence: Slander, the House of Fame, and the Mercers' Petition

- 2: Urban Treason: Troilus and Criseyde and the Treasonous Aldermen of 1382

- 3: Idealism and Antagonism: Troynovant in the Late Fourteenth Century

- 4: Ricardian Communities: Thomas Usk's Social Fantasies

- 5: Conflicted Compaignyes: The Canterbury Fellowship and Urban Associational Form

- 6: Conflict Resolved?: The Language of Peace and Chaucer's 'Tale of Melibee'

- Conclusion

Über Autor(innen)

Marion Turner gained her doctorate from Oxford in 2002. She was then a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and is now a Lecturer in Medieval Literatures at King's College London. She has published several articles on Chaucer and his contemporaries, and has also appeared several times on television and radio discussing medieval literature and history.