Poets Laureate and the Language of Slaves : Petrarch, Chaucer, and Langston Hughes

Author / Editor
Scanlon, Larry.

Title
Poets Laureate and the Language of Slaves : Petrarch, Chaucer, and Langston Hughes

Published
Fiona Somerset and Nicholas Watson, eds. The Vulgar Tongue: Medieval and Postmedieval Vernacularity (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), pp. 220-56.

Description
Scanlon considers contemporary ideas of vernacular literature and its potential for "subversiveness" through incompleteness, focusing on the concept of "poet laureate" as introduced into English by Chaucer in ClT and on the interdependence of tradition and the African-American vernacular in Langston Hughes's "Ask Your Mama."

Contributor
Somerset, Fiona, ed.
Watson, Nicholas, ed.

Alternative Title
Vulgar Tongue: Medieval and Postmedieval Vernacularity.

Chaucer Subjects
Clerk and His Tale.