Empowering New Discourse: Response to Eugene Vance and Hope Weissman

Author / Editor
Nichols, Stephen G.

Title
Empowering New Discourse: Response to Eugene Vance and Hope Weissman

Published
Exemplaria 2 (1990): 127-47.

Description
Vance's concept of "power semantics" articulates how Chaucer uses transgressive exempla--"meta-examples which confound expectations"--to pit the discourse of medieval history against itself in PardT, predicating a literal critique of medieval culture and social institutions.
Weissman's concern with the rhetorical "gaze" prompts a reexamination of the problematic relationship between medieval visual imagery and the rhetorical figure "ekphrasis" in de Lorris's "Romance of the Rose," the GP description of the Prioress, and MilT's Alison.

Chaucer Subjects
Pardoner and His Tale.
General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.
Miller and His Tale.
Background and General Criticism.