Chaucerian Conflict

It is refreshing to read a work of literary criticism so enmeshed in primary sources and so able to construct its own understanding of a historical moment. Turner is a sensitive reader of texts, and her vision of Ricardian intertextuality is mapped out with precision and care... [Her conclusion] is one with which all Chaucerians must now grapple * Maura Nolan, Speculum *
Turner's readings of Chaucer's works are informed and perceptive, increasingly dark in the forms of antagonism, loss and fragmentation which they uncover, and carefully modulated to lead the reader towards Lacanian and post- Lacanian psychoanalytical interpretations...These readings are always interesting and often compelling: Turner writes with unusual lucidity and handles her arguments deftly on both a small and large scale. * Julia Boffey, Times Literary Supplement *
Turner's pioneeing and thoughtful study argues provocatively that Chaucer engages antagonism without any hope for final resolution or for social amelioration, thus at once reflecting and producing a world divided against itself... What distinguishes Turner's work is its acute apprehension of language and the ways in which it all but defines discourse, its attentiveness to narrative detail and to social implication, and its willingness, in addressing Chaucerian intention, both to engage and to interpret non-Chaucerian writers as varied as John Clanvowe, the Erkenwald-poet, John Gower, and Thomas Usk. * Medium Aevum *
This is a valuable and stimulating book and will appeal widely to readers of this most fascinating period in English literary history. The argument is clearly and forthrightly expressed and well-structured. The great strength of the book is to put texts side-by-side that are not often examined together, the Mercers' Petition with the House of Fame, for example. The results are sometimes startling and always interesting. * The Review of English Studies *