Imagining the Literary in Medieval England.

Author / Editor
Galloway, Andrew.

Title
Imagining the Literary in Medieval England.

Published
Tim William Machan, ed. Imagining Medieval English: Language Structures and Theories, 500–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 210-37.

Description
Contemplates the category of "the literary" in medieval English texts, surveying prior attempts to define or describe the category and indicating their utility. Comments on a range of Chaucerian topics, including the "cunningly self-authorizing discursive form" of Chaucer's dream visions; the goals of the original Chaucer Society; Chaucer's translation of Petrarch's sonnet as Troilus's "song"; and the possibility that, for Chaucer, "the idea of ‘the literary" is the "problem and desire of possessing something earthly that is wholly valuable in itself, rather than merely referentially meaningful."

Alternative Title
Imagining Medieval English

Chaucer Subjects
Background and General Criticism
Troilus and Criseyde
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Realtions