Reception of the Middle English Poetic Tradition

Abstract

Abstract This chapter considers aspects of the survival and reception of fourteenth-century poetry in English, looking not only at innovations in fourteenth-century verse writing that would prove especially influential but also at the range of works from different geographical areas that had a continuing life and appeal beyond 1400. It highlights late-fourteenth-century and early-fifteenth-century experiments with form and metre, illustrating in selected extracts some of the effects of these, and investigating also some characteristics of poetic language that exerted increasing traction. With reference to traditions of both English and Continental verse writing, it discusses aspects of the practice of Chaucer and Gower, and a newly inflected consciousness in the reception of their work of an English poetic tradition, of the role of the author, and of the significance of feeling in relation to creativity.