Table of Contents

1. Subjectivity and Textuality
'Writing is nothing but the representation of speech'
'There can be no narrative without a narrator'
Did Subjectivity Emerge?
The Following Chapters
2. Romances
King Horn
Havelok
3. Troilus and Criseyde
The Narrator in Troilus Criticism
Is There a Fallible Narrator?
Is There a Distinct Narratorial Discourse?
The Narrator and Criseyde
4. The Man of Law's Tale
Narrators in Canterbury Tales Criticism
The Man of Law as Fallible Narrator
Subjectivized Narration
The Achievement of the Man of Law's Tale
5. Narration in the Pearl Poet
'Third-Person' Narration
'First-Person' Narration
6. Lyrics
What is a Lyric?
'Lovers that kan make of sentement'
Lyric as Dramatic Monologue?
Chaucer's Complaint Unto Pity
7. Epistolary Poems
Ovid's Heroides
Two Middle English Epistolary Lyrics

About the Author

A. C. Spearing is Professor of English at the University of Virginia and Fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge.

Reviews

criticism of the highest order, both subtle and impressive... it is hard to stem one's praise for this rich and rewarding volume. Seldom does one meet a work on the Middle Age so well written, so lucid, so wise.
*Andrew Breeze, Modern Language Review*

...refreshing and important... This is a book, in short, that should be read and pondered by every medievalist, and by most modernists too: a clear breeze that disperses the obfuscations of many decades to leave the poets visible once again.
*Medium Aevum, Volume LXXVI*