The Poetry of Praise

Author / Editor
Burrow, J. A.

Title
The Poetry of Praise

Published
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Physical Description
vii, 196 pp.

Series
Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, no. 69.

Description
Burrow explores the functions and rhetoric of praise in classical, medieval, and Renaissance poetry, with commentary on its relative paucity in modern tradition. Focuses on medieval English panegyric verse, love poetry, and devotional poetry, with particular attention to "Beowulf" and Chaucer's works, though ranging widely in Old and Middle English poetry and assessing Spenser's "Faerie Queene" and Tennyson's "Idylls of the King."
The discussion of Chaucer (pp. 101-49) concentrates on the poet's rhetorical uses of intensifiers and other forms of "epideictic magnification" (both serious and satirical), examining GP, HF, praise of women and leaders, and descriptions of individuals, particularly Troilus and Criseyde.

Chaucer Subjects
Style and Versification
House of Fame
Troilus and Criseyde
General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales