Chaucer: The Earlier Poetry: A Study in Poetic Development
- Author / Editor
- Traversi, Derek.
Chaucer: The Earlier Poetry: A Study in Poetic Development
- Published
- Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1987.
- Description
- Traversi discusses the English language and medieval poetics--Chaucer's givens--and proceeds to trace Chaucer's development as a poet through BD, HF, PF, and TC. Because the language was an imperfect instrument, Chaucer's early poems are tentative.
- The dream vision, used to explore the relationship between "authority" and "experience," was inadequate for the rich "unpredictability of real human living." Traversi judges TC as the "first unquestioned masterpiece of 'modern' literature." Unlike Dante, Chaucer was impatient with the concept of finality; his genius culminating in CT, was dubious of final statements.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Background and General Criticism.
- Book of the Duchess.
- House of Fame.
- Parliament of Fowls.
- Troilus and Criseyde.