Literal Authority: The Exemplum and Its Traditions in Middle English Literature
- Author / Editor
- Scanlon, Larry.
Literal Authority: The Exemplum and Its Traditions in Middle English Literature
- Published
- Dissertation Abstracts International 48 (1987): 387A.
- Description
- Originating as a device of classical rhetoric, the exemplum became a genre in its own right through the church. Preachers brought it to a lay audience, and poets (Gower, Chaucer, Hoccleve, and Lydgate) eventually secularized it in various ways.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Background and General Criticism.