Theory and the Premodern Text

Author / Editor
Strohm, Paul.

Title
Theory and the Premodern Text

Published
Minneapolis and London : University of Minnesota Press, 2000.

Physical Description
xvi, 269 pp.

Series
Medieval Cultures, no. 26.

Description
Includes thirteen New Historicist essays as examples of "practical theory," discussing how various historical and literary texts can be seen to reveal more than they say. Topics include legal proceedings, various aspects of Lollardy, John Capgrave's Chronicle of England, Shakespeare's Falstaff, cultural "friction," and two previously printed essays on Chaucer: "'Lad with Revel to Newegate': Chaucerian Narrative and Historical Metanarrative" (SAC 18 [1996], no. 172); "What Can We Know About Chaucer That He Didn't Know About Himself?" (originally "Chaucer's Lollard Joke," SAC 19 [1997], no. 125). Three new essays include discussion of Chaucer's experience of London as evident in his Scrope-Grosvenor testimony; the "temporal asymmetries" of GP, particularly the reference to leprosy in the description of the Friar; and the representation of time and the modern reader's experience of time in TC.

Chaucer Subjects
Chaucer's Life.
Troilus and Criseyde.
General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.
Friar and His Tale.