Chaucer’s England presents new interpretations of late fourteenth-century English society through a unique combination of historical inquiry and literary analysis. Beginning with the turbulent reign of Richard I and Bolingbroke’s coup, the contributors look at organized crime, illiteracy, patronage, the influence Richard might have had personally over the remarkable literary production of the period, the concepts of gentility that shaped Chaucer’s own thinking, the pervasive influence of hunting on medieval literature, the role London played as the center of both the court and the literary world , and more.