Chaucer and the Subject of History
- Author / Editor
- Patterson, Lee.
Chaucer and the Subject of History
- Published
- Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991.
- Physical Description
- xiv, 489 pp.
- Description
- Chaucer approaches history as a subject and human beings as individualized subjects within history, examining the medieval view of history as degeneration from an ideal and developing the modernist, humanist view of history. In Anel, Boethianism transcends the recursions of the ancient past. TC reflects the difficulty of identifying human motivation within the limitations of aristocratic historical consciousness. LGW reflects Chaucer's movement toward the
- immediate, localized historical imagination of CT. MilT subverts the aristocratic historicism of KnT, each reflecting contemporary social crises. WBPT subverts the masculine, authoritarian construction of MLT, championing feminine, individual subjectivity. MerT and ShT explore commercialism as a dehistoricized ideology, and PardPT poses and mocks penance as a means of self-constitution, criticizing contemporary religious formalism.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Background and General Criticism
- Canterbury Tales--General
- Anelida and Arcite
- Troilus and Criseyde
- Legend of Good Women