Chaucer's Two Ways: The Pilgrimage Frame of 'The Canterbury Tales'

Description: In ParsP, ParsT, and Ret, we are "forced to confront" the textuality of CT; the "various conflicting interpretations" are conditioned by habitual responses to CT. Four standard approaches to ParsT--absolute, ironic, dualistic, and textual--result in an "impasse" that can be escaped only through the dualistic view "consistent with the textual."; Lawton takes the position that the placement of fragment I (10) at the close of CT may have been a compiler's decision,not Chaucer's. In part 2 of the article, he examines literary contexts and traditions that might have served as models for closure and elaborates on the contrast that ParsT provides for the rest of CT.