The Authority of Fable: Allegory and Irony in the 'Nun's Priest's Tale'
- Author / Editor
- Scanlon, Larry.
The Authority of Fable: Allegory and Irony in the 'Nun's Priest's Tale'
- Published
- Exemplaria 1 (1989): 43-68.
- Description
- The central question for NPT is not whether it is allegorical or ironic but how it uses allegory and irony to refigure its own past. This tale was composed for a court audience at the beginning of a new vernacular tradition. What kind of authority does it extract from the tradition of ecclesiastical exegesis? Chaucer's "authority is critical yet profoundly conservative, ironically self-conscious yet deferential to the status quo."
- Chaucer Subjects
- Nun's Priest and His Tale.