Chaucer's Dead Body: From Corpse to CorpusIn Chaucer's Dead Body, Thomas Prendergast looks at the material reasons behind Chaucer's transformation into a touchstone for the whole of the Anglophone Middle Ages. This book weaves an intricate argument about the ways that the body, death, and representation come together in the recuperation and reception of Chaucer over the centuries, and proposes a deeply compelling logic that links memorialization and canon formation. Making a persuasive and intriguing case that the status of Chaucer's physical body is an index of the status of Chaucer's work, and furthermore that there continues to be a link between corpse and corpus in all of our assertions of positive and negative literary values from Chaucer's time on, Prendergast organizes his study of Chaucer's literary legacy around Chaucer's tomb - around the history of attempts to restore it, to determine its authenticity, and to establish its exact location. |
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aesthetic anxieties argue assertion attempt audience authentic body of Chaucer Brigham's Bullein burial buried in Chaucer's called Cambridge canon Canterbury Canterbury Tales Catholic Caxton Chaucer's body Chaucer's corpse Chaucer's death Chaucer's genius Chaucer's grave Chaucer's tomb Chaucerian connection corporeal corpus critics culture Derek Pearsall Dryden early modern edition editor enabled English Poetry epitaph F. J. Furnivall fact Father of English Furnivall Furnivall's Gentleman's Magazine Geoffrey Chaucer Henry Hoccleve Hoccleve's idea Jacques Derrida John John Dryden John Stow kind Lansdowne Lerer Lethaby literary London loss Lydgate Lydgate's manuscript medieval memory metaphor Nicholas Brigham nineteenth century original Oxford perhaps pilgrims poem poet poet's poetic presence Protestant recovery Regement repair resting place restoration says seems seen Slavoj Žižek Stanley Stow suggests T. S. Eliot Thomas Thomas Hoccleve Thomas Speght tion transcendent translation University Press verses Westminster Abbey William William Caxton words writing York Žižek