Essays on Aesthetics and Medieval Literature in Honor of Howell Chickering

Reflecting the strong aesthetic turn in literary studies, these powerful, persuasive essays keep an eye on the seductions of beauty while offering fresh approaches to medieval poetics. Significant new scholarship, they open out to a wide range of medieval poems and poetical features, as well as to the aesthetic preoccupations of nineteenth-century medievalism. The contributors honor Howell Chickering's multi-faceted work on poetic energy, metrical surprise, and the sonic features of sense by, collectively, moving insightfully across early medieval fragments, such as "Caedmon's Hymn" and The Battle of Maldon, to the art of depicting psychological states in Old English narrative, the sublime aesthetics of terror in Beowulf, and pitch as well as deep and surface proportioning in The Dream of the Rood. For Chaucer's Age, well-researched contributions assess modes of beauty in Troilus and Criseyde, surprising unity in Chaucer on women and love, the aesthetic implications of grammatical choices and forms, and the celebration of art in Gower's French balades. Good fun is had with the artful humor of insatiable wives in the Canterbury Tales, along with the practical and gustatory aesthetic of Lydgate's culinary poems. The focus on medieval poetry rounds out with thoughtful essays on mystical poetry and prose and on the challenges of translating ambiguity in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The gathering closes, however, in intellectually and artistically striking ways with essays on Coleridge and medievalism, and, finally, the page design, ornamentation and typeface beauties of the Kelmscott Chaucer. Pleasure and delight abound in a most fitting tribute to the broad impact of the career of Howell Chickering, the G. Armour Craig Professor of Language and Literature at Amherst College. vi, 297 pages ; 24 cm The contributors to this festschrift consider the relation of aesthetics to Old as well as Middle English literature, including Chaucer especially, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Gower, Lydgate, as well as medievalisms both Romantic and modern.0It requires but brief acquaintance with Howell Chickering, either through his publications or in propria persona, to delight in the extraordinary sweep of his knowledge and interests. Happily, the intent of this volume is to celebrate the fullness of Chickerings reach. The contributors to this festschrift were asked to consider, in their own ways, aesthetics in relation to medieval literature. A bevy of contributors have responded to Chickerings extensive scholarship on Old English as well as Middle English subjects Chaucer especially, but also Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Gower, Lydgate; furthermore, several contributors follow his other interests from the Middle Ages to medievalisms both Romantic and modern Includes bibliographical references Aesthetics and Earlier English Literature: An Introduction to the Gathering -- The Aesthetics of "Cædmon's Hymn" / Fred C. Robinson -- The Art of the Psychological Narrative in Old English and Old Saxon Verse / Leslie Lockett -- Naming the Enemy and Identifying Ourselves: The Warriors of Maldon / George Clark -- Fear, Time, and Lack: The Egesa of Beowulf / Arthur Bahr -- Geometrical Proportion and the Music of Voweled Undersong in The Dream of the Rood / John M. Hill -- Troilus and Criseyde and the Modes of Beauty / Peggy A. Knapp -- Women in Love: On the Unity of The Legend of Good Women and Troilus and Criseyde / Carolyn P. Collette -- Chaucer's Insatiable Wives: Women Eating Men and the Romantic Turn in the Canterbury Tales / Kathryn L. Lynch -- Doubling and the Thopas-Melibee Link / John M. Fyler -- "His lady grace" and the Performance of the Squire / Thomas J. Farrell -- Mood, Tense, Pronouns, Questions: Chaucer and the Poetry of Grammar / Warren Ginsberg -- Art for Art's Sake: Aesthetic Decisions in John Gower's Cinkante Balades / R.F. Yeager -- Recipes for the Realm: John Lydgate's 'Soteltes' and The Debate of the Horse, Goose, and Sheep / Lisa H. Cooper -- Devotional Practice in "Crafted" Mystical Prose and Poetry: A Preliminary Inquiry / Alan T. Gaylord -- Trawþe and Tresoun: Translating Sir Gawain and the Green Knight / Clare R. Kinney -- Cosmopolitanism, Medievalism, and Romanticism: The Case of Coleridge / John M. Ganim -- 'A Definite Claim to Beauty': The Canterbury Tales in the Kelmscott Chaucer / Nancy Mason Bradbury -- Howell Chickering: A Bibliography