"I'm a Popularize"’: Rescuing Gardner's "Life and Times of Chaucer."

Published: Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 24, no. 1 (2017): 141-59.

Description: Argues that John Gardner’s "The Life and Times of Chaucer" (1977) is better approached as a "nonfiction novel" than as a "scholarly literary biography” and that its strengths outweigh its weaknesses as a pedagogical text, offering suggestions for how to use it in undergraduate classrooms. Includes comparison of Gardner’s report of Chaucer's affair with Cecily Chaumpaigne and its parallel in Derek Pearsall’s "The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer" (1992).