Chaucerian Realism

Author / Editor
Myles, Robert.

Title
Chaucerian Realism

Published
Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994.

Physical Description
xiii, 153 pp.

Series
Chaucer Studies, no. 20.

Description
Countering the modern critical view of Chaucer as a nominalist or antirealist, Myles finds Chaucer a realist in many senses of the term: "a foundational realist, an epistemological realist, an ethical realist, a semiotic and linguistic realist, and an author capable of creating psychologically real characters."
Topics include medieval understandings of realism, intentionality, and semiological metaphysics, as well as medieval and modern understandings of modes of presentation. Myles demonstrates his argument primarily in terms of Chaucer's deliberate play with three-level semantics in FrT,the very subject of which is intentionality. Gives some attention to Bo, ClT, GP, ManT, MerT, NPT, PardT, ParsT, Ret, Rom, Sted, SumT, TC, and WBT.

Chaucer Subjects
Background and General Criticism.
Friar and His Tale.