Medieval Interpretation: Models of Reading in Literary Narrative, 1100-1500
- Author / Editor
- Sturges, Robert S.
Medieval Interpretation: Models of Reading in Literary Narrative, 1100-1500
- Published
- Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991.
- Physical Description
- x, 302 pp.
- Description
- Stressing the role of the reader in finding meaning, Sturges traces the development of a "belief in an indeterminacy of literary meaning." Alongside Neo-Platonism and the "directed vision" typical of the early Middle Ages, a "new mind set emphasized a multiplicity of meanings in the world and in language." Authoritative truths no longer could be revealed through allegorical interpretation.
- Chretien, for example, "rejects allegory in favor of ambiguity," and by the fourteenth century "semantic indeterminacy in love and in reading was expected, conventional, and enjoyable." In chapter four, "Communication and Interpretation: Three States in Chaucer's Career," Sturges analyzes BD, TC, and WBP. BD opposes interpretation to communication; TC correlates textuality and alienation; WBP presents people as texts.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Background and General Criticism.
- Wife of Bath and Her Tale.
- Troilus and Criseyde.
- Book of the Duchess.