Late Gothic Pathos in the MLT
- Author / Editor
- Weissman, Hope Phyllis.
Late Gothic Pathos in the MLT
- Published
- Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 9 (1979): 133-53.
- Description
- Past opinions are either that Chaucer was profoundly involved with the tale and reflected the period's emotionalism or that he was detached and disenchanted with the narrator. Actually the tale is an exposure of the "publicly sentimentalizing sensibility" of the age. Chaucer aligns his aesthetic with that of late medieval devotional art in its most ornamental and histrionic form.
- But adherence to such an aesthetic may lead to spiritual complacency, which Chaucer seeks to unsettle by converting the tale into "a profoundly earnest jest," with some outright parody.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Man of Law and His Tale.