Author Description

A distinguished group of medievalists contribute to this volume in honor of Robert Worth Frank, Jr., Professor Emeritus of English literature, The Pennsylvania State University, editor of the Chaucer Review and past president of the New Chaucer Society. The studies reflect his life-long interest in the poetic art that emerged in late medieval English narrative out of multiple historical contexts, and taken together they illuminate ways in which English writers at the end of the middle ages employed the resources of their cultural moment to create narratives that still engage us. The twelve studies divide into three groups. The first group examines Piers Plowman and aspects of Langland's narrative art; the second considers important facets of Chaucer's narrative artistry and its relationship to medieval literary and cultural practice; the third group deals with late medieval English narrative and social custom, reflecting recent increased scholarly interest in the dramaturgy of medieval social life, hence of the symbolic structures that shape narratives in the historical and literary record.