John Trevisa's Information Age: Knowledge and the Pursuit of Literature, c. 1400.

Author / Editor
Steiner, Wendy.

Title
John Trevisa's Information Age: Knowledge and the Pursuit of Literature, c. 1400.

Published
New York: Oxford University Press, 2021.

Physical Description
xii, 287 pp.; 25 b&w illus.

Series
Oxford Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture.

Description
Considers John Trevisa's translations of "compendious" encyclopedic texts as examples of a prose literary form that is an influential part of a late medieval literary history, an "alternative" to the better-known tradition of Trevisa's poetic contemporaries--Chaucer, Gower, and Langland. Addresses Trevisa's works as a distinct kind of text and a way of processing, organizing, and presenting information, exploring antecedents and descendants, and at points exemplifying differences from and similarities to works by Chaucer and others. The index includes nine citations of Chaucer, but he is also mentioned elsewhere in the book.

Chaucer Subjects
Background and General Criticism