Writing to the King: Nation, Kingship, and Literature in England, 1250-1350
- Author / Editor
- Matthews, David.
Writing to the King: Nation, Kingship, and Literature in England, 1250-1350
- Published
- Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
- Physical Description
- xv, 221 pp.
- Series
- Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, no. 77.
- Description
- Matthews explores the English rhetorical device of writing about political topics as if the author were writing directly to the king, even though the works that used the device were intended for a wider audience. The device flourished in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, so it predates Chaucer. However, Chaucer, Gower, and others explored this literary strategy during the reign of Richard II in works such as Chaucer's Purse.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Complaint of Chaucer to His Purse
- Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations