Lee Patterson

Frederick W Hilles Professor of English Lee Patterson, PH.D.

Renowned scholar of medieval literature, Lee Patterson, presents a compelling vision of the shape and direction of Geoffrey Chaucer's entire career in Chaucer and the Subject of History. Chaucer's interest in individuality was strikingly modern. At the same time he was profoundly aware of the pressures on individuality exerted by the past and by society—by history. This tension between the subject and history is Patterson's topic. He begins by showing how Chaucer's understanding of history as a subject for poetry—a world to be represented and a cultural force affecting human action—began to take shape in his poems on classical themes, especially in Troilus and Criseyde. Patterson's extended analysis of this profound yet deeply conflicted exploration of the relationship between "history" and "the subject" provides the basis for understanding Chaucer's shift to his contemporary world in the Canterbury Tales. There, in the shrewdest and most wide-ranging analysis of late medieval society we possess, Chaucer investigated not just the idea of history but the historical world intimately related to his own political and literary career. Patterson's chapters on individual tales clarify and confirm his provocative arguments. He shows, for example, how the Knight's Tale represents the contemporary crisis of governance in terms of a crisis in chivalric identity itself; how the Miller's Tale reflects the social pressures and rhetoric of peasant movements generally and the Rising of 1381 in particular; and how the tales of the Merchant and Shipman register the paradoxical placement of a bourgeois class lacking class identity. And Patterson's brilliant readings of the Wife of Bath's Tale—"the triumph of the subject"—and the Pardoner's Tale —"the subject of confession"—reveal how Chaucer reworked traditional materials to accomplish stunning innovations that make visible unmistakably social meanings. Chaucer and the Subject of History is a landmark book, one that will shape the way that Chaucer is read for years to come.

Chaucer and the Subject of History

Heather James

Stephen Owen

Jerome W. Clinton

Francis Abiola Irele

Sarah Lawall

Indira Viswanathan Peterson

William G. Thalmann

An anthology of world literature, featuring poetry, prose, drama, and fiction, covering a period that ranges from the invention of writing to the early seventeenth century, with six longer works, including Sophocles' "Oedipus the King," Dante's "Inferno," and Shakespeare's "Hamlet."

The Norton Anthology of World Literature

A Casebook

Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales

The ten essays selected for this book illuminate the central themes of the most frequently taught Canterbury Tales. These texts are appropriate for undergraduates and general readers and were edited carefully to ensure that references and allusions are explained in footnotes. Theoretical excursus and critical jousting have been either simplified or omitted entirely. At the end of each essay is an annotated list of further readings. The volumes editor is one of the most distinguished active Chaucerian scholars in the world.

As a traditional site of historical criticism, medieval studies is particularly well placed to benefit from the recent reemergence of historicism in literary studies. But this new "critical historicism" differes from the traditional criticism in both method an interests, differences that are well illustrated by this collection. A concern with politics, a reliance on the materials of economic and social history, a conception of writing as a form of social practices, a focus upon the forces of change in medieval culture, and unwillingness to observe the usual distinction between literary and historical texts, and a historicization of their own activity--these characteristics make these essays a significant contribution to medieval studies. Moreover, both in conception and execution the essays reject the barrier that the humanist account of history has erected between a Middle Ages stigmatized as distant and other and a Renaissance consecrated as the beginning of the modern world. Thus they invite the attention of nonmedievalists, especially Renaissance specialists, who wish to test their assumptions about medieval literature against some of the best recent work in the field. The authors consider a wide range of materials. Three of the essays explore Chaucer's career as a bureaucrat, a diplomat, and a poet. Other topics include Langland's self-constitution in Piers Plowman, the medieval production and modern reception of the mystery plays, Hoccleve's innovative strategies for offering political advice to his king, and the ideological and psychological interests that governed the idea of the city in sixteenth-century Scotland. All scholars and studies of the Middle Ages, comparative literature, and literature and language programs generally will appreciate this ground-breaking collection. Contributors:Anne MiddletonPaul StrohmLee PattersonDavid WallaceLarry ScanlonTheresa ColettiLouise Fradenburg This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990.

Literary Practice and Social Change in Britain, 1380-1530

Robin Hansen

Jamie Alan Belanger

Cynthia Ravinski

Richard Veysey

Timothy Lynch

Steven Inman

D.L. Harvey

Shelli-Jo Pelletier

Matthew Stephen D.

For the past five years, the Greater Portland Scribists writing group has been independently publishing their fiction in annual anthologies. This Omnibus edition combines almost every story we've published. Ten of our current and previous members have contributed a total of 44 stories to this collection. From our inaugural volume to this year's volume, Inversions, the stories contained in this Omnibus Edition span nearly every speculative fiction subgenre there is--fantasy, horror, science fiction, paranormal, and more. The Scribings Omnibus contains stories from the following volumes: - Scribings, Vol 1 - Scribings, Vol 2: Lost Civilizations * - Scribings, Vol 3: Metamorphosis - Scribings, Vol 4: Miscreations - Scribings, Vol 5: Inversions * Christopher L. Weston's story from Lost Civilizations, Ordovicia, will remain exclusive to the original ebook

The Scribings Omnibus

Lee Patterson

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