Orality, Literacy, and Chaucer: a Study of Performance, Textual Authority, and Proverbs in the Major Poetry

Author / Editor
McKenna, Steven R.

Title
Orality, Literacy, and Chaucer: a Study of Performance, Textual Authority, and Proverbs in the Major Poetry

Published
Dissertation Abstracts International 49 (1989): 3370A.

Description
Chaucer's poetry presents tensions between the authority of literature and that of traditional oral wisdom. In HF, the confused narrator cannot induce meaning; in TC, Troilus's mindset, Pandarus's and Criseyde's reliance on proverbs, and the narrator's insistence on his author's authority are in conflict; in CT, narrator and characters misinterpret one another. Readers become interpreters.

Chaucer Subjects
Background and General Criticism.
House of Fame.
Canterbury Tales--General.
Troilus and Criseyde.