Call for Paper Abstracts for International Congress on Medieval Studies
in Kalamazoo in May 2007; proposal deadline: September 15
In the fifteenth century, Chaucer's authorial identity began to take shape in a variety of ways. The symbolic capital associated with his name led editors to take liberties when assigning works to the poet. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Chaucer's oeuvre remained fluid and editors often placed apocryphal works alongside legitimate tales and poems. A wide-range of works, from Lydgate's continuation of the themes of the Canterbury Tales to the polemical Plowman's Tale, became associated with Chaucer in the years following his death. Following the
introduction of the printing press to England, these additions to Chaucer's canon often became fixed within the complex matrix of book production and marketing that emerged from the maelstrom of early print culture. This panel will examine how Chaucer developed as an author and how his role as a literary figure shaped the way he was (and is) received. We seek papers that draw on a number of disciplines including the history of the book, textual studies, manuscript studies, and literary history to explore the issues of book production and trade and
its role in the formation of Chaucer the author and his accepted body of work.
Please email or mail cover letter (or equivalent information) and abstracts of no more than 300 words to either :
Paul J. Patterson at patterpj@ucmail.uc.edu
Department of English
St. Joseph's College
155 West Roe Boulevard
Patchogue, NY 11772
or
Shannon Gayk at sgayk@indiana.edu
Department of English
Ballantine 442
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47405
Abstracts must be received by September 15, 2006
