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Chaucer at Large The Poet in the Modern Imagination Steve Ellis |
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A spirited look at the uses and abuses of Chaucer's work in modern culture. In this learned, lively, and wide-ranging book, Steve Ellis conducts us on a tour of the appearances that the greatest writer of Middle English has made throughout English-speaking culture in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Surveying the uses to which Chaucer has been put in modern times, Ellis presents a compelling picture that goes beyond the figure and work of the great writer to show us the reach of his imaginative power as it touches and shapes our own. In novelists' and poets' responses to Chaucer, children's versions of his work, modern translations, adaptations for stage, television, radio, and film, and the marketing of Chaucer's "heritage," Ellis traces Chaucer's presence among us-from the permutations of his writings in the work of such authors as William Morris, W. B. Yeats, Rudyard Kipling, James Joyce, Henry James, and D. H. Lawrence to its presentation in the Canterbury Tales Experience museum in Canterbury, England. Animated, witty, as critically acute as it is far-reaching, this work, appearing in the sixth centenary of Chaucer's death, tells us much about a writer at the heart of our cultural tradition and, perhaps, more about that tradition itself. “Lively and instructive. Ellis’s judgment is admirably sure, but then he has the perfect credentials: a medievalist who is a fine modern poet and a brilliant translator of Dante.” —Times Literary Supplement “Chaucer at Large fills a gap in Chaucerian scholarship, as it is the first general overview of Chaucer’s reputation from the 1870s to the present day. It is particularly useful for teachers of Chaucer who are not specialists. Steve Ellis’s style is clear, the book is free of jargon, and there is no axe to grind.” —Arthuriana “Chaucer at Large will surely encourage others to explore this neglected but fascinating field.” —Speculum “The book is heartily recommended not only for its exquisite entertainment value, but also for its insights in tracing the cultural semiotics of modern representations of Chaucer.” —English Studies “Steve Ellis patiently and tolerantly fishes through the range of evidence of Chaucer’s “presence” in British literary and popular culture of the twentieth century and comes up with an interesting haul.” —Journal of English and Germanic Philology “Engaging and informative. Altogether an entertaining, well-written book, with something for everybody.” —Parergon Steve Ellis is professor of English literature at the University of Birmingham, England. 184 pages | 5-7/8 x 9 | 2000 |
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$35.00 Cloth/jacket