Signs and/as Origin: Chaucer's 'Nun's Priest's Tale'

Description: NPT reveals "the dangerous nature of signs" and offers a view of signification that looks forward to Derrida. The many oppositions foregrounded in the poem (truth/fiction, "confusio"/"blis," predestination/free will, etc.) point to the inscription of signifer/signified in a preexisting linguistic system. Although Christian ontology specifies a transcendental signified, some aspects of medieval sign theory anticipate recent refusals to privilege either side of the dichotomy.