Theories of Poetry, 1256-1400.

Published: DPhil. Dissertation. University of Oxford, 2019. v, 282 pp. Dissertation Abstracts International C83.06(E). Freely accessible at https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:dfc9eb17-71d5-425f-a7b1-2e835310e322; abstract available via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.

Description: Surveys interrelated attitudes toward the "status and function of poetry" in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Europe, limning poetry's exalted status in the Parisian schools and in the writings of Roger Bacon and Alberto Mussato, and exemplifying later evidence of distrust in its reliability in Gower's "Confessio Amantis" and in HF. Reads the latter as a "self-destructive riposte to the poetic self-conceptions of humanist writers like Dante" and "an important meta-poetic rejection of humanist poetic theory, denying the author any control over his work."