Making and Managing the Past: Lexical Commentary in Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender (1579) and Chaucer’s Works (1598/1602)

Abstract

Traditional accounts of the relationship between Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender and the writings of Geoffrey Chaucer foreground the influence of the medieval poet on the work of his sixteenth-century successor. By examining how E. K.’s commentary in the Calender shapes the presentation of Chaucer’s works, this essay considers instead how the Calender influenced the reception and presentation of Chaucer in the late Tudor period. In particular I argue that the editorial apparatus in Thomas Speght’s edition of Chaucer’s Works (1598, rev. 1602) takes from E. K.’s commentary two of its most significant preoccupations: its perception of Chaucer as a figure embodying both classical and vernacular poetic traditions, and of Chaucer’s language as archaic and potentially difficult for readers. E. K.’s epistle to Gabriel Harvey contains some of the longest discussions of Chaucer’s English before the publication of Speght’s Works, which at times quotes it directly. Like the Calender, Speght’s Works includes substantive discussion of Chaucer’s language and, like the Calender, it cites lexicographic forms to illustrate differences between contemporary language and the verse that it presents. In both works the introduction of a lexicon makes newly visible the peculiarities of Chaucerian language, framing it as temporally distant while insisting upon its relevance to contemporary poetic enterprise.