Chaucer and the Late Medieval World
- Author / Editor
- Bisson, Lillian M.
Chaucer and the Late Medieval World
- Published
- New York : St. Martin's Press, 1998.
- Physical Description
- x, 294.
- Description
- Reads Chaucer's works for the ways they reflect the "conflicting realities he confronted in his world." An opening section on "The Poet and His World" introduces the "double vision" of the intellectual world Chaucer inherited and describes his balanced "conception of his task as a poet."
- Subsequent sections introduce social and historical backgrounds to the following topics and then examine how the subtopics are reflected in Chaucer's works: Religion (hierarchy and heresy, quest for perfection, and popular religion), Class Commerce (chivalry, social unrest and economy), and Gender and Sexuality (views of women, love, and marriage).
- Bisson focuses on CT and TC but mentions all of Chaucer's major works, concluding that CT is especially marked by the carnivalesque tensions between high and low, sacred and profane, and serious and comic characteristics of Chaucer's age.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Background and General Criticism.
- Canterbury Tales--General.
- Troilus and Criseyde.