Al This Mene I Be Love

Author / Editor
Spearing, A. C.

Title
Al This Mene I Be Love

Published
John V. Fleming and Thomas J. Heffernan, eds. Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 2, 1986 (Knoxville, Tenn.: New Chaucer Society, 1987), pp. 169-77.

Description
Examines the pervasiveness of love iconography and tradition in PF. Reviews various interpretations, political and social, and sees the "center" of the poem in the central line on the treacherous lapwing, a model for Chaucer's method with its many contradictions. PF is a structure without a center. Chaucer delights in the "irresolvable diversity of the birds' ideas about love." Love in PF consists in "yearning for a center and a meaning that are absent."

Alternative Title
Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 2 (1986)

Chaucer Subjects
Parliament of Fowls.