'Ars Celare Artem': Interpreting the Black Knight's 'Lay' in Chaucer's 'Book of the Duchess'
- Author / Editor
- Hardman, Phillipa.
'Ars Celare Artem': Interpreting the Black Knight's 'Lay' in Chaucer's 'Book of the Duchess'
- Published
- Poetica (Tokyo): 37 (1993): 49-57.
- Description
- Examines the two lyrics embedded in BD for what they reflect about the relation between the narrator and the Black Knight. Through this relation and its "delicate act of self-effacement," Chaucer credits John of Gaunt for commemorating his dead wife. On another level, Chaucer also uses the lyrics as a wry form of the humility "topos," signaling "the freedom of his own invention" in the poem.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Book of the Duchess.
- Lyrics and Short Poems.