Ricardian Poetry: Chaucer, Gower, Langland, and the "Gawain" Poet

Description: Proposes the label "Ricardian" for the late fourteenth-century period of English literature and "looks at the four chief poets of the time . . . as a group," identifying their common stylistic features, rooted in earlier English tradition of storytelling; their shared preference for narrative, exempla, narrative "pointing," and frame narratives; and their "essentially unheroic" treatment of human beings, "sometimes humorous and quite unmonumental." Despite their regional dialects, the lack of a written standard, and their divergent literary receptions, the four poets and their works constitute a period "in the full literary sense" of the term. Considers all of Chaucer's major poems, Gower's English poetry, and the works of Langland and the "Gawain" poet. Opens with a comparison with Ricardian visual art and concludes with a discussion of the poets' uses of simile.

Chaucer Subjects: Background and General Criticism; Style and Versification; Language and Word Studies; Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations