DescriptionThis dissertation explores the boundaries that define the “Chaucerian,” a concept that was as much a product of Chaucer’s later editors, adapters, and imitators as it was a product of his contemporaries and predecessors. In exploring the Chaucerian, this dissertation juxtaposes concepts and materials from different historical periods, including Shakespeare, Spenser, Henryson, and 20th- and 21st-century film. This project not only explores the anachronistic connections that led to the creation of the Chaucerian, but also concludes that anachronism is an essential part of what still sustains it. Anachronistic scholarship that approaches texts and authors from beyond the traditional boundaries that separate them—and which separate us from them—is not only essential to our understanding of Chaucer, but essential to our understanding of our relationship to his work and to the past itself.