A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism

"Medievalism, Multilingualism, and Chaucer" examines multilingual identity in the writing of Gower, Langland, and Chaucer. Mary Catherine Davidson traces monolingual habits of inquiry to nineteenth-century attitudes toward French, which had first influenced popular constructions of medieval English in such historical novels as Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe. In re-reading medieval traditions in the origins of English from Geoffrey of Monmouth, this book describes how multilingual practices reflected attitudes toward English in the age of Chaucer. …