Symbolic Caxton: Literary Culture and Print Capitalism

Author / Editor
Kuskin, William.

Title
Symbolic Caxton: Literary Culture and Print Capitalism

Published
Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008.

Physical Description
xxvi, 390 pp.

Description
Kuskin presents a manifesto on history-of-the-book studies as well as on the need to rethink Chaucerian reception. The volume is divided into three sections: "Capital and Literary Form," "Authorship and the Chaucerian Inheritance," and "Print and Social Organization."
The second section includes two chapters: "Chaucerian Inheritances: The Transformation of Lancastrian Literary Culture into the English Canon," a succinct history of Caxton's two editions of Chaucer; and "Uninhabitable Chaucer: Patronage and the Commerce in the Self," an argument that Chaucer's canonical status in the fifteenth century made it difficult for new writers to claim Chaucer's legacy.

Chaucer Subjects
Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations
Chaucer's Influence and Later Allusion