Politics and Poetics: Usk and Chaucer in the 1380s

Published: Lee Patterson, ed. Literary Practice and Social Change in Britain, 1380-1530 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 83-112.

Description: London politics in the 1380s were characterized by "shifting planes of alliance." Such shifting in the early years of the decade led to the eventual struggle of 1385-88 between Richard's court party and the duke of Gloucester's aristocratic appellants. Londoners such as Thomas Usk and Geoffrey Chaucer were confronted with possibilities for advancement as well as with perils of factional affiliation.; Usk tried to win Chaucer's own political favor by complimenting Chaucer in his "Testament of Love," but Chaucer avoided direct personal and political commentary in his works.

Alternative Title: Literary Practice and Social Change in Britain, 1380-1530.