Reading against the Grain: How the Victorian Kelmscott Chaucer Reworks Medieval Cultural Heritage

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Abstract: Among the many Chaucer manuscripts and printed editions, the 1896 Kelmscott Chaucer is a special case that has stimulated scholars' curiosity about the purpose behind the creation of a quasi-manuscript nearly half a millennium after Chaucer's time. This lavishly decorated book has drawn wide scholarly attention to its illustrations and ornamental features. Unlike other large-scope studies that examine the whole book, this essay focuses on illustrations and decorations in The Canterbury Tales and argues that William Morris's book project reworks medieval literary heritage to convey his own reformist views. The first three sections show how Morris uses his page designs to highlight Chaucer's concerns regarding humanity's relations to nature and art, in which he finds enduring relevant values for Victorian society. Morris uses the page designs to elicit contemporary readers' attention and to convey his aesthetic and political views. The fourth section draws on the author's hands-on experience with the codex to discuss its material aspects. While catching the reader's attention may slow down the process of reading, Morris's physical design of the book and the exemplary nature of its materiality challenge modern notions of reading. Paradoxically, Morris's Kelmscott Chaucer is a modern book that reworks medieval heritage but that also, by means of such reworking, invents a Victorian heritage. The final section discusses how new technologies have interacted with Morris's invented heritage to influence twenty-first-century reading practices.