"Knapp s unique skill as a critic and a writer has always been to address both non-specialists and beginning students and at the same time make sophisticated technical arguments that move scholarship in the field forward. In her latest book, Knapp argues for an empowerment in the engagement with the aesthetic that inescapably dramatizes personal and political struggles, both historically and existentially.Narrative excitement, verbal beauty, and visual pleasure are neither allegories of entrapment nor timeless, universal ideals, but are both ends and means of transformation. Knapp demonstrates that medieval aesthetic effects are not static and unchanging, but are part of both poetic and social change." - John M. Ganim, Professor of English, University of California- Riverside; President of the New Chaucer Society; and author of Medievalism and Orientalism "An original and highly engaging book. Knapp seeks to reintegrate aesthetic considerations into Chaucer criticism, through a defense and illustration of interpretation which takes pleasure in the beauty of the text. Skillfully interweaving medieval and modern theories of imagination and art, she succeeds admirably in positioning Chaucerian poetry within a valorizing regime of the aesthetic ." - Alastair Minnis, English Department, Yale University
