Telling the Private Parts: 'Pryvetee' and Poetry in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

Author / Editor
Hanning, Robert W.

Title
Telling the Private Parts: 'Pryvetee' and Poetry in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

Published
James M. Dean and Christian Zacher, eds. The Idea of Medieval Literature: New Essays on Chaucer and Medieval Culture in Honor of Donald R. Howard (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992), pp.108-25.

Description
"Pryvetee" assumes a spectrum of meanings and a range of functions in the overall scheme of CT. Hanning examines a few of these functions, suggesting that at the center of the poem and Chaucer's art is a mysterious, antithetical, yet symbiotic relationship between "pryvetee" and poetry.

Alternative Title
Idea of Medieval Literature.

Chaucer Subjects
Canterbury Tales--General.
Language and Word Studies