Understanding the Manuscript Frontispiece to Corpus Christi College MS 61: The Political Landscape of a Lancastrian Portrait

Description: Considers the frontispiece to TC found in Corpus Christi College MS 61 (which depicts Chaucer addressing a court audience, particularly the court of Richard II). The frontispiece shows that literature was delivered orally (by "prelection") and received aurally in Chaucer's time and much later. Helmbold assesses in this light modern misreadings of Chaucer as a poet to be read silently, Lydgate's aurality, the status of TC and the manuscript in the court of Henry V, and the "persistence" of aurality in literary reception through the nineteenth century.