Chaucerian Belief: The Poetics of Reverence and Delight
- Author / Editor
- Hill, John M.
Chaucerian Belief: The Poetics of Reverence and Delight
- Published
- New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 1991.
- Physical Description
- 204 pp.
- Description
- Chaucer's works explore and promote "cognitive credence"--belief as a way of knowing the truths reflected in fiction. In BD, HF, PF, and LGWP, the narrators' confrontations with various fictions show that belief and emotional involvement are prerequisites for approaching the truth of tales. CT is best understood not as a rhetorical or a dramatic variety of tellers and tales but as a series of experiments in representing affectively the feelings, beliefs,
- and perceptions of narrators and audience who seek to state or find truth. Fragment VII is central to understanding Chaucer's reverential epistemology of fiction but SNT, CYT, ManT, SqT, and FranT also reflect his examinations. Since such an epistemology is exploratory rather than exclamatory,ParsT may not be part of CT.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Background and General Criticism.