Chaucerian Theatricality: Then and Now

Abstract

John Ganim's 1990 book, Chaucerian Theatricality, raised important questions about the methods of studying Chaucer's public poetry and, in turn, about the relationships among authorial, narratorial, and critical voices, both in his time and ours. This paper reconsiders Ganim's book in the context of Chaucerian criticism of the 1990s, and it develops the implications of its notion of theatricality to embrace new readings of the Tales and new approaches to twenty-first-century debates in Chaucer scholarship. The paper concludes by arguing that the real, current site of Chaucerian theatricality lies in the areas of teaching and research, especially in the recent publication and dissemination of work reassessing the status of Chaucer's raptus of Cecily of Chaumpaigne.