Challenge of Periodization

In these essays some of today's leading literary scholars and cultural critics re-examine major writers genres and themes in relation to their traditional period affiliations. The essays cover a broad range of writers and periods from the Middle Ages to the present grouped in two main areas: Chaucer and Medieval and Renaissance studies (Larry D. Benson Heiko A. Oberman Lee Patterson and Aldo Scaglione) and English and American literary history (Sanford Budick H. M. Daleski Denis Donoghue Robert J. Griffin Geoffrey Hartman J. Hillis Miller Jerome McGann and Helen Vendler). In addition to shedding new light on a specific author each essay also refines or reinvigorates critical approaches to specific periods. The analyses illuminate and clarify our understanding of what are traditionally but problematically called the Medieval Renaissance Enlightenment Romantic Modern and Postmodern eras in European cultural history.