O Quike Deth: Love, Melancholy, and the Divided Self

Author / Editor
Boitani, Piero.

Title
O Quike Deth: Love, Melancholy, and the Divided Self

Published
Piero Boitani. The Tragic and the Sublime in Medieval Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 56-74.

Description
Discusses links among eros, melancholia, and acedia as well as the tragic psychological dilemma of love in Petrarchan sonnets, Dante, and TC, especially in Chaucer's use of the Petrarchan sonnet "S'amor non e." The "oxymoronic essence" of TC allows the reader to experience the "tragic gulf that separates and joins the contraries."

Alternative Title
The Tragic and the Sublime in Medieval Literature.

Chaucer Subjects
Troilus and Criseyde.
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations.