Chaucer's Self-Fashioning

Author / Editor
Cooper, Helen.

Title
Chaucer's Self-Fashioning

Published
PoeticaT 55: 55-74, 2002.

Description
Chaucer's "doubleness" in critical tradition results from combinations of self-deprecation and extravagant claims to poetic authority in his works. In 1592, Robert Greene depicted Chaucer as short, whereas the frontispiece of Speght's 1598 edition depicts the poet as tall. These apparent contradictions have been sustained throughout critical tradition, resulting from Chaucer's own claims to be multitudinous and nothing at all. Cooper discusses authorial self-fashioning in BD, HF, TC, and CT (especially Th and Mel).

Chaucer Subjects
Background and General Criticism.