Chaucer and the French Tradition Author:Charles Muscatine It was first published in 1957 and is notable among modern studies of Chaucer for its attention to the importance of style. The author offers first an analysis of the two doinant traditions of style in the French literature on which Chaucer's poetry is based: the courtly, and the "bourgeois" or realistic. He then studies the stylistic characte... more »r of the three important early poems, arguing that Chaucer's development was not a revolt from convention to realism, but rather a progressive mastery of both methods simultaneously.« less