The Making of the English Literary Canon : From the Middle Ages to the Late Eighteenth Century

Author / Editor
Ross, Trevor Thornton.

Title
The Making of the English Literary Canon : From the Middle Ages to the Late Eighteenth Century

Published
Montreal and Buffalo : McGill-Queen's University Press, 1998.

Physical Description
x, 400 pp.

Description
Describes development of the English literary canon in light of two parallel developments or "epistemological shifts": the development from a "rhetorical" to a "modern 'objectivist' culture" and the shift from an idea of "canonicity based on production" to "canonicity based on consumption." In a discussion of "Early Gestures" toward canon formation (beginning with "Widsith"), Ross discusses Chaucer's claims to poetic identity in HF, TC, Ret, and elsewhere. He then records passim the reception and status of Chaucer in the development of the English canon up to the Romantics.

Chaucer Subjects
Chaucer's Influence and Later Allusion .
Troilus and Criseyde.
House of Fame.