Poetic and Literary Theory

Abstract

Abstract What we call poetic and literary theory occupied a wide range of medieval intellectual culture, in settings and approaches that can be divided into two parts: first, rhetorical analysis and rules, and second, more abstractly philosophical and theological analyses. Often treated separately, both strands are surveyed in this chapter, which examines the settings and methods both of the ‘rhetorical arts’ and the ‘commentary tradition’. The chapter shows how both traditions seeped into English poetry between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, influencing poetry’s presentations of literary forms, purposes, and authorship, especially in the poetry of Chaucer, Gower, and Langland. Yet poetry in English across these centuries also implied its own versions of poetic and literary ‘theory’. Chaucer and Gower especially appropriated such theory to their own ends, making the boldest but far from the only contributions by poets to medieval literary theory.