The Premodern Text and the Postmodern Reader

Description: Chaucer studies are often considered neutral and unpoliticized, whether they are subjective, personalized readings, or objective and "professionalized." The construction of the Middle Ages as unalterably "Other," combined with the lack of a "well-defined historiographical paradigm," promotes a generalized, untheoretical historicism that masks the "concretely situated positionality" of Chaucer criticism.; Essays in this special issue of Exemplaria initiate a dialogue with other contemporary academic discourses to counter this tendency and to connect the historical and theoretical.