"This collection features modernist and postmodernist approaches to the rhetorically inflected poetry of the middle ages. Specialists in both Continental and Chaucerian literature analyze the ways in which medieval poets engage various literary and rhetorical problems.". "How does one understand and manipulate figurative language? How does one evoke and harness emotion constructively? And how does one recall while revivifying the ambiguous compositions of earlier poets in different traditions for an immediate audience and for projected future audiences? In postmodern terms, these questions for the medieval poet invite scholarly attention to heteroglossia, stylistic polyphony, and the orchestration of various levels of figurative language."--BOOK JACKET.