The French Fetish from Chaucer to Shakespeare
- Author / Editor
- Williams, Deanne.
The French Fetish from Chaucer to Shakespeare
- Published
- Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2004.
- Physical Description
- xiv, 283 pp.
- Description
- Traces the "representations of, and responses to" France and Frenchness in BD and Chaucer's Prioress, the Corpus Christi plays, Caxton's publishing career, the poetry of Stephen Hawes and John Skelton, and Shakespeare's history plays. English identity is marked throughout this literature by efforts to "emulate French culture" in conflict with a desire to "articulate a distinctively English voice."
- BD is Chaucer's meditation on his earlier imitations of French poetry-an English manifesto and a nostalgic elegy. The GP Prioress and PrT reveal a desire to identify with French culture and a simultaneous inability to read cultural codes accurately. Williams also discusses the role of Chaucer in Caxton's output.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Book of the Duchess.
- Prioress and Her Tale.
- Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations.