Congenial Souls: Reading Chaucer from Medieval to Postmodern

Description: Examines critical discourses from the late Middle Ages to the late twentieth century that have constructed Chaucer for, and mediated his poetry to, subsequent readers. Trigg explores "Chaucer's status as an exemplary canonical author for English literary tradition," models of Chaucerian authorship, and fifteenth-century constructions of the "open" Chaucerian text. She surveys the importance of Dryden's translation of Chaucer and the nature of writing about Chaucer in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and considers various "recent attempts to 'reform' Chaucer studies." She contends that the field "still has the capacity to be an exemplary topic in our meditations on similarity and difference with other cultures."