Chaucer: Experimentalist Extraordinary

Author / Editor
Hobsbaum, Philip.

Title
Chaucer: Experimentalist Extraordinary

Published
Philip Hobsbaum. Tradition and Experiment in English Poetry (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield; London: Macmillan, 1979), pp. 30-67.

Description
Identifies a number of ways in which Chaucer is innovative in various works--metrical variety, interplay of tones, indebtedness to Continental sources and "ingenuity," combination of narrative attachment and detachment--and surveys the range of social attitudes toward marriage and human foibles in CT, characterizing it as a "relativist poem" and labeling Chaucer as "by far" the "greatest experimental poet" in English tradition.

Alternative Title
Tradition and Experiment in English Poetry.

Chaucer Subjects
Canterbury Tales--General
Style and Versification