Dismantling the Canterbury Book

Author / Editor
Dean, James.

Title
Dismantling the Canterbury Book

Published
PMLA 100 (1984): 746-62.

Description
The last tales of CT form a closing sequence of transformation: SNT (conversion fervor in the early church), CYT (alchemical madness of fourteenth-century England), ManT (debasing of myth), and ParsT (change of soul through penitence), as Chaucer gradually disengages himself from fiction for his Ret. Thus Ellesmere order, which represents Chaucer's intentions for closure, is preferred to Hengwrt.

Chaucer Subjects
Canterbury Tales--General.