Chaucer, Gower, and the Vernacular Rising

Chaucer, Gower, and the Vernacular Rising, Volume 1, explores the complex transmission of Greco-Roman and European literature into the English language during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Lynn Arner examines how burgeoning literacy among nonruling classes created a democratizing potential for accessing and interpreting learned texts. This academic study focuses on the upper strata of urban populations and how their engagement with literature shaped cultural authority.

The text analyzes how the works of Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower functioned as tools for constructing cultural expertise and political leverage following the English Rising of 1381. As a work of Middle English history and criticism, this book investigates the intersection of English poetry, social classes, and literacy. It provides a detailed look at how vernacular poetry participated in social control and the negotiation of gender and poetics within late medieval English society.