Renaissance Texts, Medieval Subjectivities.

Description: Argues that the Petrarchism commonly held to have begun in English with Wyatt and Surrey is, instead, an alteration of a tradition already prevalent among English writers such as Chaucer, Gower, Hoccleve, and Lydgate. In particular, claims that Langland's ideas of physical and artistic reward directly influence Wyatt's sonnets and Spenser's "Amoretti"; Chaucer's BD undergirds Henry Howard and Philip Sidney's "Astrophil and Stella"; Lydgate's "Temple of Glas" and "Complaynte of a Louers Lyfe" become points of departure for Samuel Daniel's "Delia" and Michael Drayton's "Idea"; and Hoccleve's "La male regle" and Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid" position pathological affect to emerge in Shakespeare's sonnets. Additionally, Chaucer's early engagement with Petrarchan constructions frustrates the usual assertion that the Renaissance is a break-point with the past.

Chaucer Subjects: Chaucer's Influence and Later Allusion
Book of the Duchess
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations