Earnest Games

In Ernest Games Carl Lindahl recovers a folkloric world long hidden from readers of Chaucer. Lindahl is the first critic to demonstrate how the poem reflects the social and artistic patterns of medieval folk performance. Combining current approaches from the fields of literary criticism, social history, and folklore, Earnest Games begins with a study of Chaucer's setting and characters. Lindahl discovers that Chaucer gives each communitythe gentils, the churls, and the pilgrimsa game strategy that faithfully reflects the social realities of the English Middle Ages.