Coterie Poetics and the Beginnings of the English Literary Tradition : From Chaucer to Spenser / R. D. Perry.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Perry, R. D., 1979- author.

Series:

Middle Ages series.

The Middle Ages Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Chaucer, Geoffrey, -1400--Influence.

Chaucer, Geoffrey.

English poetry--Middle English, 1100-1500--History and criticism.

English poetry.

English poetry--Early modern, 1500-1700--History and criticism.

Literature and society--England--History--To 1500.

Literature and society.

Literature and society--England--History--16th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (337 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2024]

Summary:

"In Coterie Poetics and the Beginnings of the English Literary Tradition, R. D. Perry reveals how poetic coteries formed and maintained the English literary tradition. Perry shows that, from Geoffrey Chaucer to Edmund Spenser, the poets who bridged the medieval and early modern periods created a profusion of coterie forms as they sought to navigate their relationships with their contemporaries and to the vernacular literary traditions that preceded them. Rather than defining coteries solely as historical communities of individuals sharing work, Perry reframes them as products of authors signaling associations with one another across time and space, in life and on the page. From Geoffrey Chaucer's associations with both his fellow writers in London and with his geographically distant French contemporaries, to Thomas Hoccleve's emphatic insistence that he was "aqweyntid" with Chaucer even after Chaucer's death, to John Lydgate's formations of "virtual coteries" of a wide range of individuals alive and dead who can only truly come together on the page, the book traces how writers formed the English literary tradition by signaling social connections. By forming coteries, both real and virtual, based on shared appreciation of a literary tradition, these authors redefine what should be valued in that tradition, shaping and reshaping it accordingly. Perry shows how our notion of the English literary tradition came to be and how it could be imagined otherwise."--Publisher.

Contents:

Part I. Chaucer's Coteries in the English and French Traditions

Chaucer's London Coterie

The French Connection: Chaucer, Deschamps, and Granson

Theoretical Interlude I. Tradition and the Coterie Talent

Part II. Between Coterie and Tradition

Traditional Exclusions: Hoccleve and Chaucer, but Not Christine de Pizan

Lydgate's Virtual Coteries

Theoretical Interlude II. On Becoming Chaucerian

Part III. Old Chaucer, New Coteries, and the English Literary Tradition

The Birth of Tradition (and New Coteries): Chaucerianism After Lydgate

Old Authors in New Books: Tottel's Miscellany

Spenser's Antiquarian Coterie

Conclusion. Authors, Readers, and Literature's Coterie Feeling.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781512826036

1512826030

OCLC:

1423293633