Lat the chaf be stille: Exemplary fictions in late medieval England.

Abstract

In late medieval England, massive dislocations of the literary system transformed the act of reading. The sudden rise of English poetry in the 14th century and the advent of print in the 15th century opened texts to a wide range of new audiences. In response, Middle English exemplary works both constrain their new readers and open them to the transformative powers of literature. Exemplary literature perpetuates the absolutist notion that a past event, the narration and reception of that event, and the reader's social behavior exist in absolute causal alignment. But despite the univocal authority usually associated with didactic narratives, exemplary alignment is a fiction that frequently breaks down. Drawing on theories of translation, intertextuality, and reception, this dissertation investigates how textual imitation both enables and complicates exemplary imitation--how, that is, the relations between olde bokes and new suggest relations to new readers as well. The study is structured around acts of reception: the French Livre du Chevalier de la Tour Landry and its translation by Caxton; Gower's Apollonius of Tyre in the Confessio Amantis; the versions of the story of Virginia in Gower's Confessio and in Chaucer's Physician's Tale; Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale and the Canterbury Interlude before the Tale of Beryn; and Henryson's Testament of Cresseid and Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde.