Barbarian Memory: The Legacy of Early Medieval History in Early Modern Literature

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-vi

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2. Barbarian Memory and the Uncanny Past

   • Nicholas Birns

   Pages 1-43

3. Chaucer, Gower, and Barbarian History: “The Man of Law’s Tale” and the Prologue to Gower’s Confessio Amantis

   • Nicholas Birns

   Pages 44-59

4. Rome, Christianity, and Barbarian Memory in Titus Andronicus

   • Nicholas Birns

   Pages 60-78

5. Rhyme, Barbarism, and Manners from Trissino to Corneille

   • Nicholas Birns

   Pages 79-125

6. Back Matter

   Pages 126-131

   PDF

An investigation of the use of Late Antique European history by late medieval and Renaissance writers such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Davenant, Trissino, and Corneille. The liminality of the late antique period and the issues of ethnicity and religion it raises makes it very different from that of the classical world in analogous writers.

• Chaucer
• Early Modern Literature
• English literature
• Europe
• European history
• history
• history of literature
• Medieval Literature
• Middle Ages
• Renaissance
• William Shakespeare
• British and Irish Literature

Nicholas Birns is Associate Teaching Professor at the New School, USA. He is the author of Understanding Anthony Powell and Theory After Theory: An Intellectual History of Literary Theory From 1950 to the Early 21st Century, as well as the co-editor of A Companion to Australian Literature Since 1900, which was named a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Book in 2008.

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