Coterie Poetics and the Beginnings of the English Literary Tradition

"In Coterie Poetics and the Beginnings of the English Literary Tradition, R. D. Perry reveals how poetic coteries formed and maintained the English literary tradition. Perry shows that, from Geoffrey Chaucer to Edmund Spenser, the poets who bridged the medieval and early modern periods created a profusion of coterie forms as they sought to navigate their relationships with their contemporaries and to the vernacular literary traditions that preceded them. Rather than defining coteries solely as historical communities of individuals sharing work, Perry reframes them as products of authors signaling associations with one another across time and space, in life and on the page. By forming coteries based on shared appreciation of a literary tradition, Perry demonstrates, these authors redefine what should be valued in that tradition, shaping it accordingly. Coterie Poetics explores how the English literary tradition was created through coteries and how it could be created otherwise"--