Animal Speech and Political Utterance: Articulating the Controversies of Late Fourteenth-Century England in Non-Human Voices.
- Author/Editor
- Fulton, Sharon
- Title
- Animal Speech and Political Utterance: Articulating the Controversies of Late Fourteenth-Century England in Non-Human Voices.
- Published
- Fulton, Sharon. "Animal Speech and Political Utterance: Articulating the Controversies of Late Fourteenth-Century England in Non-Human Voices." PhD thesis, Columbia University, 2012.
- Review
- "This dissertation analyzes the function of animal speakers in political poetry by William Langland, Geoffrey Chaucer, and John Gower, and it claims that late fourteenth-century poets describe the marginalized voices of emerging politicians by using animal expressions and noises. These writers invent a playful yet earnest poetics of acknowledgment in comparing politicians' calls to animal cries. In unveiling novel interpretations of Langland's mouse, Chaucer's goose, and Gower's jay, I argue that the speeches of animals contribute to significant strains within several late fourteenth-century poems, which remain obscure if the reader ignores the signal contribution of the animal. Finally, I study the use of animal speech in the Lancastrian poem, "Richard the Redeless," to understand the ways in which the anti-Ricardian regime appropriated this malleable animal imagery to pursue its own political agenda." [JGN 33.2.]
- Date
- 2012
- Gower Subjects
- Vox Clamantis