Chaucerian Theatricality

Description: Beginning with Kittredge's argument that the thematic and structural unity of CT lies in the pilgrims and their dramatic interchange, and moving to the counterarguments of Muscatine (1957), Robertson (1962), Jordan (1967), Pearsall (1985), and Benson (1986)--which attempt "to drive a stake into the heart of the "dramatic" reading of the "Canterbury Tales"--Ganim proposes replacing the metaphor of "drama" with that of "theatricality."; His intention is to orient contemporary critical positions "toward some long-neglected materials such as urban and court spectacle and certain forms of late medieval performance." The "theatricality" metaphor locates a governing sense of performance in CT, and an interplay among Chaucer's voice, his fictional characters, and his immediate audience.; It becomes a paradigm for the Chaucerian poetic and defines "Chaucer's own manipulations of the forms of popular culture and the varying discourses of inherited high literary forms." The "theatricality is then primarily stylistic rather than sociological, but that style is immersed in social and political contexts ranging from popular theatrics to court ceremony."