Narrative, Authority, and Power: The Medieval Exemplum and the Chaucerian Tradition
- Author / Editor
- Scanlon, Larry.
Narrative, Authority, and Power: The Medieval Exemplum and the Chaucerian Tradition
- Published
- Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
- Physical Description
- xii, 378 pp.
- Series
- Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, no. 20.
- Description
- Late-medieval English exempla and exemplum collections have political and ideological significance. Vernacular exempla are "narrative enactment(s) of cultural authority" that appropriate the authority of exemplary sermons and imitate the political goals of the "Furstenspiegel," or Mirrors of Princes.
- Such "Chaucerian" uses of exempla as those in CT, Gower's "Confessio Amantis," Lydgate's "Fall of Princes," and Hoccleve's "Regement of Princes" claim "moral and cultural authority" and support secular claims for power over the church. Chaucer's efforts at textual complexity are "always conditioned" by his political goal of promoting the sharing of power between the crown and the aristocracy.
- Following the Ellesmere order of CT, Scanlon traces patterns of relations between textual complexity and political moralization in FrT, SumT, ClT, PardT, Mel, MkT, NPT, and ParsT.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Canterbury Tales--General.
- Background and General Criticism.
- Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations.