What Man Artow?: Authorial Self-Definition in 'The Tale of Sir Thopas' and 'The Tale of Melibee'

Description: Th and Mel should be read in light of Chaucer's struggle to define his authorial role in opposition to courtly "makers"--thus, the appropriation of minstrel performance in Th and of a narrator and hero described in terms associated with children. Th displays, though "in diminutive and parodic forms, attributes and values...central to the 'comedye'" of CT.; By contrast, Mel is a "prudential florilegium. Manuscript evidence, the dramatic contex of Mel, the tale's emphasis on the theme of the child--all point to the tale's pedagogic nature. The Th-Mel conjunction reveals Chaucer adopting an ambivalent authorial identity derived from the figure of the child in late medieval culture.