Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms in England and Italy

DavidWallace finds Chaucer engaged in surprising ideological areas.Wallace's ac- count of Chaucer's polity challenges conventionally evaluative periodisations as well as offering a radically new configuration of Chaucer's involvement with discourses that are generally associated with the Italian Renaissance.Chaucer's reworking of those discourses suggests the ideal of a generously inclusive associational polity in comparison with which the subsequent Renaissance must appear as a dark age of autocratic absolutism.Wallace approaches Chaucer's poetry through a rich blend of Marxist historiography, cultural materialism, and gender studies.