The Review of English Studies Advance Access published online on September 10, 2009
The Review of English Studies, doi:10.1093/res/hgp064
© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press 2009; all rights reserved
‘Texts with Trowsers’: Editing and the Elite Chaucer
University of British Columbia
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Abstract |
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A crude accusation of elitism penciled into the margins of Fisher's; The Importance of Chaucer inspired this article. Why should knowledge of Chaucer, the writer traditionally known as the Father of English Literature, be considered elitist, particularly considering the fact that his name is one of the most widely recognised of historical writers? This article argues that Chaucer first became an elite subject through the work of the Early English Text Society (EETS) and the Chaucer Society, societies which played a significant role in transforming Middle English language and literature from obscure, juvenile, and uncouth to a professional field of discourse with its own forms of power and privilege. This article further suggests that an underlying culture of elitism was foundational to the ‘democratic’ work of these societies. This sense of elitism was cultivated through the editorial and pedagogical treatment of what I have termed the paradoxical Chaucer—a figure whom English citizens are expected to know and understand intuitively, and yet who was also an increasingly specialised academic subject in a discipline configured by the EETS and the Chaucer Society. During the course of the latter nineteenth century, members of both societies transformed from rank amateurs to the first professionals in a new field who were then able to mediate newly-reputable medieval literature to the ‘unlearned’ masses. Using the sociohistorical perspectives of Siskin, Hunter and Foucault as a fruitful background, this article connects these changes to the moralising of English literature and the increasing consciousness of linguistic difference that accompanied the search for a ‘Standard English’.