The Poetics of Personification
- Author / Editor
- Paxson, James J.
The Poetics of Personification
- Published
- Cambridge: Cambridge University PRess, 1994.
- Physical Description
- xii, 210 pp.
- Series
- Literature, Culture, Theory, no. 6.
- Description
- Defines and analyzes personification as fundamental to literature and human consciousness. Surveys the history and theory of the device and examines its roles in works by Prudentius, Chaucer, Langland, and Spenser, applying various modern critical theories, including narratology, phenomenology, semiotics, and deconstruction.
- The chapter on Chaucer considers HF and PF as works where personifications are projections of the narrator, who phenomenologically loses self through the projections. The loss of self is similar to, or a form of, sloth or "accedia."
- Chaucer Subjects
- Background and General Criticism.
- House of Fame.
- Parliament of Fowls.