Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer.

Barry Windeatt's introductory survey of 'Chaucer traditions' situates the essays in this collection in relation to appreciations and interpretations of Chaucer from the poet's own lifetime until the end of the seventeenth century (neatly marked by the publication of Dryden's Fables in 1700), with special emphasis on perceptions of Chaucer's language. It is followed by fifteen essays dealing with responses to Chaucer's influence, concentrating either on a single writer or group of writers (Gower, Lydgate, Hoccleve, the translator of Partonope of Blois, Scottish 'Chaucerians', Henryson, Gavin Douglas, Skelton, the lyricists of the Fayrfax Manuscript, Kinaston, Dryden), or on the fortunes of one of Chaucer's works (the Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale, the Knight's Tale, the Clerk's Tale, the apocryphal Plowman's Tale). The …