Patterns of Religious Narrative in the "Canterbury Tales"

Description: Treats problems of authority and artistic originality encountered by the medieval narrator of a religious story, and the solutions in CT. Parallels between translating and producing the narrative appear in ClT, SNT, PrT, and Mel; subversion of the parallel and the role of the mediating narrator are seen in MLT, MkT, and PhyT; PardT and NPT provide a tension between inconclusiveness and resolution.; Deals with relations between fictional narrator (the pilgrim teller), the received matter (fictional, homiletic, dogmatic), narrative forms, and the pilgrim audience. Some tales are transparent vehicles for orthodox dogma (the narrator as impersonal translator). In some, "the narrator's personality" is the disturbing focus of attention, violating dogmatic coherence. In MkT, "literary interests" overturn the "religious."