World History in the Tumultuous 1330s: A Study of Nicholas Trevet's Anglo-Norman "Cronicles."
- Author/Editor
- Brent, Jonathan Lawrence.
- Title
- World History in the Tumultuous 1330s: A Study of Nicholas Trevet's Anglo-Norman "Cronicles."
- Published
- Brent, Jonathan Lawrence. "World History in the Tumultuous 1330s: A Study of Nicholas Trevet's Anglo-Norman 'Cronicles.'" Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Toronto, 2021. Dissertation Abstracts International A83.01(E). Full text accessible at https://utoronto.scholaris.ca/home.
- Review
- In his dissertation Brent offers a "sustained reading" of Trevet's 'Cronicles' "as a text in its own right, with its own strategies of language and form, and its own historical context," locating the 'Cronicles' among early fourteenth-century "Plantagenet efforts" to respond to "contemporary political uncertainty" and reflecting "methods of conceptualizing and articulating the nation in religious terms" (iii). In chapter three, Brent assesses Trevet's narrative of Constance as central to the formal and thematic unity of the 'Cronicles.' He argues sensibly that the Constance narrative should be read within the entirety of the 'Cronicles,' not isolated or synopsized for the sake of comparison with Gower's and Chaucer's stories of Constance. The length, placement, and resonances of Trevet's Constance account in the context of the larger work, Brent argues, compel us to understand it as a rich expression of "the idea that [Constance's] motherhood allows England, through its royal blood, to bring about its own salvation" (163), an idea, he shows then at some length, that was useful in Plantagenet "crusading politics," (245) and valuable as an example of more pervasive late-medieval thinking about history. Chaucer is mentioned much more often than Gower in Brent's treatment of Constance, largely because critical tradition has, he shows, skewed attention to concerns that privilege the "Man of Law's Tale." In at least one instance, however, Brent suggests that study of Trevet might usefully prompt attention to an "underexplored aspect of source study among Chaucerians and critics of Gower, i.e., Trevet's "legal diction" (174).] [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 44.1]
- Date
- 2021
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations