Chaucer to Shakespeare, 1337-1580

Description

In the 250 years represented in this book, literature reflects key transitions, embedded as it is in far reaching political, religious and socio economic transformations. It tracks some of the resulting tensions in various genres, especially those that re-integrate or respond to the traditional. Such literature is examined by using the tools of rhetoric and semiotics, interpreting from the author audience axis and focusing on dissonant markers in canonical, as well as, less well known narratives. SunHee Kim Gertz looks at the history and culture of the era in order to contextualize the work she examines, including "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", "The Book of Margery Kemp", "Le Morte D'Arthur" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream". Offering a fresh perspective on a period of rich literary output, that students often find difficult to engage, this should prove to be a welcome guide and critical companion.

SUNHEE KIM GERTZ is Professor of English at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts.

This volume on the period from Chaucer to Shakespeare offers a comprehensive and thoroughly comparative approach to its materials in ways that readers will find wonderfully helpful and new. The underlying assumption of its method is that the authors of the late medieval and early modern period shared assumptions about the creative process that can best be understood and appreciated in terms of rhetorical strategies and semiotic signs connecting word and image through the medium of artistic communication. The handsome illustrations and attention to historical context underscore the cross-disciplinary commitment of this fresh approach to late medieval art of all genres. The book is written in an engaging style calculated to make it vividly available to today's readers.' - Professor David Bevington, University of Chicago 'This is an admirably controlled survey of a large field. SunHee Kim Gertz's remarkable grasp of the traditions of European rhetoric enable her to provide a really fresh perspective on the English canon of the later medieval and early modern periods, while her analysis remains firmly grounded in broader European cultural developments.' - Professor Winthrop Wetherbee, Cornell University 'Gertz adds an imaginative, student-friendsly vigorous scholarly conversation concerning an era of great literary innovation and change.' - Albion