Gordon Teskey wrote:
> >>Dear Carol,
> >>
> >>Yes, interesting and most suggestive. But here follows my defense
> of poets.
> >>
> >>First, Chaucer isn't crude. Renaissance authors thought he was
> because,
> >>being ignorant of middle English, they couldn't scan him; and the
> Thynne
> >>edition didn't help.
Some people may have had trouble with Chaucer's English and thought it
crude, but the appearance of so many editions following Thynne's strongly
suggests that the "ignorant" group was not a majority. Langland would
seem to be more open to the charge of linguistic crudeness, but this does
not seem to have been a majority opinion either. There were people
interested in reading Langland, and there were some authors (John King
discusses Crowley, Hoggarde, and others) who imitated the late medieval
alliterative style as well as the ideas expressed therein. -Dan Knauss
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