Introduction

This Handbook produces a stereoscopic view of Chaucer’s works. Juxtaposing chapters by Middle English scholars with chapters by specialists in other fields – Latin and vernacular literature, philosophy, theology, and history of science – it offers a new perspective that uses the works of Chaucer to look out upon the wider world. Clusters of essays that place Chaucer’s works in “the Mediterranean Frame” and “the European Frame” are bracketed by groupings on “Biography and Circumstances of Daily Life” and “The Chaucerian Afterlife,” while a cluster on “Christian Doctrine and Religious Heterodoxy” foregrounds the role of confessional identities in the emergence of Middle English literary authority. The Handbook’s scope addresses the claim of universality that is often implicit in the study of Chaucer’s works. Chapters on anti-Judaism in the Canterbury Tales and on Hebrew literature reveal what has been suppressed or elided in the construction of English literary history, while studying the Arabic sources and analogues of the frame tale tradition reveals the patterns of circulation that lie behind the early modern emergence of national literatures. Chapters on French, Italian, and Latin literature address the linguistic context of late fourteenth-century Europe, while chapters on philosophy, history of science, and theology spur on new areas of development within Chaucer studies. Pushing at the disciplinary boundaries of Chaucer Studies, this Handbook maps out how we might develop our field with greater awareness of the interconnected world of the fourteenth century, and the increasingly interconnected – and divided – world we inhabit today.