Omschrijving
Provides a new account of the literary history of fourteenth-century England, arguing that many of this period's most distinctive literary experiments emerge through a productive dialogue with the Romance of the Rose, a jointly-authored medieval French poem.
The book offers insights on writers such as Jean de Meun, Chaucer, Gower, Christine de Pizan, and William Langland. Readings of the text are organized in groupings that demonstrate the ongoing interrelation of the many interpretations that arose in England in the 14th century.
The Rose, it is suggested, 'has been so difficult to describe in modern criticism' because of its 'multiplicity, and the colliding-together of different reading practices that it produced'. Knox has coped with that difficulty superbly well, producing literary criticism of the highest order. Densely written, intellectually sparkling and always absorbing, this is an exceptional book which frequently achieves brilliance.
This book should be an invaluable resource for scholars of both French and English literature interested in the Rose and its afterlives.
Well written, learned, meticulously organized, and characterized by skilful readings of French and English texts and by a sensitivity to manuscript contexts, this book should be an invaluable resource for scholars of both French and English literature interested in the Rose and its afterlives.
Philip Knox is a University Lecturer in Medieval English Literature at the University of Cambridge, and a fellow of King's College. He is one of the editors of New Medieval Literatures.