The Disingenuous Poet Laureate: Spenser's Adoption of Chaucer
- Author / Editor
- Esolen, Anthony M.
The Disingenuous Poet Laureate: Spenser's Adoption of Chaucer
- Published
- Studies in Philology 87 (1990): 285-311.
- Description
- Spenser imitated Chaucer's bumbling narrative stance and tone and employed Chaucerian allusions to feign a humility that dismarmed criticism and enabled him to undercut the Tudor myth. Further, he expected his reader to understand the pretense. Book 1 of "The Faerie Queene" echoes Th, PF, and KnT, as well as Virgil, in order to subvert the imperial epic.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Chaucer's Influence and Later Allusion.