A Hissing Stanza in Chaucer's 'Prioress's Tale'
- Author / Editor
- Ferris, Sumner.
A Hissing Stanza in Chaucer's 'Prioress's Tale'
- Published
- Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 80 (1979): 164-68.
- Description
- Lines 1748-54 (558-64) of PrT are a "tour de force" of sustained onomatopoetic alliteration, with thirty-one ("recte," thirty-two) sibilants, in hissing imitation of "the serpent Sathanas." Chaucer's artistry here is more subtle and varied than in the cruder, "rum ram ruf" alliterating passages in KnT and LGW.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Style and Versification.
- Prioress and Her Tale.