Strohm's Social Chaucer is one of those academic texts that I constantly hear referenced in discussion but never had the time to go back and read myself (which I suppose is what exam reading is for). As I read through it, I found the arguments to be interesting and well formed, but it felt like much of what I was reading presented a basis for reading Chaucer that was part of the way in which I already read these texts. Rather than some incredible cleverness of my own, this is in the end related to the opening sentence of this paragraph; Strohm's text is not only well cited but has clearly shaped the readings, or at least provided tools, for the professors whom I've had the pleasure of studying Chaucer with.
Strohm primarily argues that Chaucer's poetry is influenced by the poet's personal social position, as an esquire in a liminal social position, as a poet writing for other poets, and as an official whose texts may be connected to his own political leanings. Thus, Strohm argues for a reading of Chaucer that pushes against a monolithic voice of Middle English literature and instead keeps ever present the idea that in the end Chaucer was an individual who existed in the middle of a series of interpersonal relationships and social positioning. While noting that Chaucer does not, in his extant Canterbury Tales, have either a lord or peasant tell a tale, Strohm suggests that the complex social position and relations of and between the pilgrims demonstrates the complex social aspects that Chaucer operated within and was influenced by. While I may have been familiar with some of Strohm's core points, it was nonetheless a pleasure to see how those points were laid out and supported with a surprising range of evidence.
Don't you love it when this happens? I had a similar experience when I read RFG's book for the first time. Then, as I continued reading through my list, I discovered that the reason Poets and Princepleasers had already sounded so familiar to me is because EVERYONE WAS CITING IT.
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