The Carnal Letter in Chaucer's Earthly Paradise
- Author / Editor
- Jager, Eric.
The Carnal Letter in Chaucer's Earthly Paradise
- Published
- Eric Jager, The Tempter's Voice: Language and the Fall in Medieval Literature (Ithaca, N.Y.; and London: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 241-98.
- Description
- In MerT, Chaucer presents a version of the Edenic Fall that emphasizes the roles of language and writing in seduction. Especially in the pear-tree episode, the Merchant's "dark vision" dramatizes Augustinian commentary on the Fall as an abuse of signs, implicating Chaucer's own fiction. But ParsT and Ret encourage transcendence of the Fall.
- Alternative Title
- The Tempter's Voice: Language and the Fall in Medieval Literature.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Merchant and His Tale.