Chaucer the Historian: Chaucer's Reception, Reproduction, and Transmission of Humanist Historiographical Style

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Chaucer's well-worn reputation as the Father of English Poetry has eclipsed his revolutionary effect upon English historiography. My doctoral thesis explores the stylistic influence of Italian humanism on Chaucer's historical writing, and bridges the striking gap between two topical scholarly fields; Chaucer and Italy, and Chaucer's sense of history. Style and decorum were the predicates of Renaissance humanism, the eloquent application of the appropriate rhetorical register in accordance with a given mode or genre, which revealed individual talent. Chaucer's acute understanding of these predicates created a new landscape of historical writing in England, which my thesis examines for the first time. I explore the first forays into this new landscape by tracing the influence Chaucer's distinctive historical style had on poet-historians such as John Lydgate and Osbern Bokenham, whose imitation of Chaucer in the fifteenth century established him as England's great historical poet.