The Paston Women and Chaucer: Reading Women and Canon Formation in the Fifteenth Century

Author / Editor
Watt, Diane.

Title
The Paston Women and Chaucer: Reading Women and Canon Formation in the Fifteenth Century

Published
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 42 (2020): 337-50.

Description
Argues that evidence of female readership drawn from the Paston letters indicates familiarity with works by Chaucer and by Lydgate, as well as popular spiritual writings, devotional works, hagiographies, and chivalric treatises. Emphasizes the importance of "literary culture" rather than "scribal activity" as indicators of the fifteenth-century English literary canon.

Chaucer Subjects
Chaucer's Influence and Later Allusion