Chaucer and Langland
Subtitle: The Antagonistic Tradition
Edition: 1 edition
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
Published: May 1, 2007
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 488
ISBN-13: 9780268022020
Subjects: English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Medieval; Literary Criticism; Poetry; Criticism, Textual; English literature; History and criticism; Manuscripts, English (Middle); Middle English, 1100-1500
Description: "Although Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland together dominate fourteenth-century English literature, their respective masterpieces, The Canterbury Tales and Piers Plowman, could not be more different. While Langland's poem was immediately popular and influential, it was Chaucer who stood at the head of a literary tradition within a generation of his death. John Bowers asks why and how Chaucer, not Langland, was granted this position. His study reveals the political, social, and religious factors that contributed to the formation of a literary canon in fourteenth-century England."--Jacket.