Chaucer and the subject of history

TLDR

Chaucer’s work reflects a modern concern with individuality while simultaneously recognizing the historical and societal pressures that shape it. The book offers a unified vision of Chaucer’s career, focusing on the tension between the individual subject and historical forces. Patterson traces Chaucer’s evolving conception of the subject in poetry through analyses of early classical-themed works, then uses these insights to explain his transition to the contemporary world in the Canterbury Tales. The study concludes that Chaucer’s work interrogates the historical world in relation to his political and literary career, offering a comprehensive analysis of late medieval society that will interest scholars of medieval literature and history.

Abstract

In this book, one of world's leading medievalists provides us with a single vision of shape and direction of Geoffrey Chaucer's entire career. Chaucer's interest in individuality was strikingly modern. At same time he was profoundly aware of pressures on individuality exerted by past and by society - by history. It is this tension between subject and that Patterson explores. The book begins by showing how Chaucer's understanding of 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, Anelida and Arcite and Troilus and Crisyede . Patterson's brilliant analyses of these profound yet deeply conflicted explorations of relationship between history and the self provide basis for understanding Chaucer's shift to his contemporary world in Canterbury Tales. There, in shrewdest and most wide-ranging analysis of late medieval society we possess, Chaucer investigated not just idea of but historical world intimately related to his own political and literary career. This book should be of interest to students and lecturers of medieval literature and history.