Literary Nominalism in Chaucer's Late-Medieval England: Toward a Preliminary Paradigm

Author / Editor
Utz, Richard [J.]

Title
Literary Nominalism in Chaucer's Late-Medieval England: Toward a Preliminary Paradigm

Published
European Legacy 2.2 (1997): 206-11.

Description
Argues that recent attention to the late-medieval shift from realism to nominalism is attributable to a parallel shift in modern critical assumptions.
Inspired by postmodern views of the world as "recalcitrant to universals, contingent, and supportive of . . . free will," critics have studied late-medieval nominalism as a source of linguistic and philosophical attitudes in the works of Chaucer and his contemporaries and as a bridge between medieval and modern views.

Chaucer Subjects
Background and General Criticism.