Eighteenth-Century Modernizations from the Canterbury Tales
Regular price
€92.99
14 days return policy
Shipping & Delivery
Canterbury Tales
Category=DCQ
Chaucer
Chaucer Scholarship
Enduring Appeal
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
Literary Complexity
Modernised Versions
Poetry
Reception
Sexuality
William Lipscomb
Product details
- ISBN 9780859913096
- Weight: 612g
- Dimensions: 172 x 244mm
- Publication Date: 21 Mar 1991
- Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
This collection of 32 modernised versions of The Canterbury Tales which appeared in the 18th century offers basic material for studying the history of attitudes to Chaucer, and Chaucer scholarship, duringthe period. Reception data so precise and extensive is available only for Chaucer among English authors. At least seventeen known and anonymous writers produced thirty-two modernised Canterbury tales during the century, plus tale links and adaptations of each other's work. The present collection contains only modernisations that have not seen print since 1796, thus excluding those by Pope and Dryden.
Although most works in this collection may be examined further in several British and American libraries, others cannot. Apparently only one copy has survived of an anonymous Miller's Tale (1791) with a thoughtful preface justifying the tale's overt sexuality published just as William Lipscomb was completing his 1795 edition that, in its preface, justifies exclusion from the pilgrimage of the notorious tales of Miller and Reeve. Such contrasting attitudes illustrate the dangers of generalisation about the usual reception or interpretation of Chaucer during this or any other socio-historic period; instead, the collection provides an untapped reservoir of material with which to investigate anew the rich complexity of his poetry and its enduring appeal.
BETSY BOWDEN is Professor of English at Rutgers University,New Jersey.
