The Cast of Character: the Representation of Personality in Ancient and Medieval Literature

Description: The ways of representing character practiced by "highly self-conscious" poets reflect the "shaping imagination" of these authors against the backdrop of tradition--rhetorical, philosophical, and sometimes theological. In Ovid character is poetic self-reflection, discovered in the "Amores" and made more sophisticated in later works.; "Literary typology" shapes characters like Gottfried's Tristan, Dante's Farinata, and Chretien's Yvain. Boccaccio's characterizations grow from and through the ambivalence of the rhetorical "Disputatio in utramque partem." Chaucer transforms conventions and uses his frames to create multiple perspectives on character in BD, CT, LGW, MLT, and ClT.

Chaucer Subjects: Book of the Duchess.; Legend of Good Women.; Man of Law and His Tale.; Clerk and His Tale.