Chaucer and the Late Medieval World: The Poet and the Late Medieval World

by Lillian M. Bisson

Divided between the outer world of affairs and the inner world of poetic insight, Chaucer sought to make sense of his changing, conflicting world. In Chaucer and the Late Medieval World , Lillian M. Bisson examines the societal issues that the poet explored in his work. She focuses on three major areas of medieval life - religion, class/commerce, and gender - all of which were experiencing considerable change in the fourteenth century. The book builds a bridge between an unmediated encounter with Chaucer's texts and the more specialized discussions found in most contemporary criticism, and provides a detailed analysis of Christian culture. By placing each topic in a broad cultural context, Chaucer and the Late Medieval World helps the reader to better understand the questions that teased Chaucer's imagination into poetry and to enter into the cultural conversation with which he engaged his audience.

Genres: History, Medieval, Literature

304 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1998

Reviews

[Thomas Jr. · Rating 4 out of 5]

For anyone in search of a concise and readable treatment of the historical and cultural contexts in which Geoffrey Chaucer wrote his masterworks, Bisson's volume will be extremely welcome. Armed with what she provides, any reader can approach any of the Canterbury Tales or any of Chaucer's freestanding poems with a solid and enriching sense of the cultural particulars with which Chaucer was so creatively engaging.

[Briana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Initial Thoughts: Great overview of attitudes and practices during the Middle Ages. The author often specifies how things changed in different centuries (useful since "The Middle Ages") covers a very, very large swath of time, yet what people believed in the 1100s is not necessarily what they believed in the 1200s or 1300s. The integration of Chaucer was hit or miss. In some chapters he seemed like an afterthought, but this didn't really bother me since I feel as though I can take the information and start analyzing Chaucer's texts on my own.

[David Withun · Rating 4 out of 5]

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