Literal and Figurative in 'The Book of the Duchess'

Author / Editor
Spearing, A. C.

Title
Literal and Figurative in 'The Book of the Duchess'

Published
Paul Strohm and Thomas J. Heffernan, eds. Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 1, 1984 (Knoxville, Tenn.: New Chaucer Society, 1985), pp. 165-71.

Description
In BD, Chaucer uses "the ambiguous status of the dream, as irresponsible fantasy and as vision of truth," to defend poetic fiction. Only in the "context of the figurative" does "the literal possess its full rhetorical power."

Alternative Title
Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 1 (1984)

Chaucer Subjects
Book of the Duchess.