Chaucer: Shorter Poems

Abstract

Chaucer's “Short Poems” include complaints, love lyrics, and philosophical, religious, and political short verse. They are primarily written in courtly lyric forms taken from the French tradition, but most do not have direct French sources. The short poem that has drawn the most scholarly attention is the poem to “Adam Scriveyn,” both in terms of positing the actual scribe to be Adam Pinkhurst and more literary approaches which analyze the metaphors and images used. Other poems have garnered attention in terms of source study, formalism, gender study, historicism, and more.