Introduction

Abstract

CHAUCER scholars are not noted for the speed with which they absorb the latest literary theory. One contributor to a volume entitled New Perspectives in Chaucer Criticism remarked that ‘just as it was some fifteen years before New Criticism [i.e. “close reading”] reached Chaucer in the 1950s, so it is the case with new literary theorizing, which is now about ripe to reach Chaucer’ (Bloomfield 1981, p.25). Poised at this moment of somewhat nervous anticipation, Bloomfield settled for an inspection of recent theoretical positions themselves, lining them up like suspects in a police identification parade and speculating which theory might be expected to yield positive results in relation to Chaucer.