'Paradoxicum Semiotica': Signs, Comedy, and Mystery in Fragment VI of the 'Canterbury Tales'

Author / Editor
Crafton, John Micheal.

Title
'Paradoxicum Semiotica': Signs, Comedy, and Mystery in Fragment VI of the 'Canterbury Tales'

Published
Jean E. Jost, ed. Chaucer's Humor: Critical Essays (New York and London: Garland, 1994), pp. 163-86.

Description
Chaucer's comedy is a "function of the inherent paradoxes of language, particularly as articulated by Freud," and the humor of CT depends on the audience's awareness of the slippage between truth and language. The paired opposition of PhyT and PardT caricatures the respective extremes of realism and nominalism, affirming a moderate conceptualism.

Alternative Title
Chaucer's Humor: Critical Essays.

Chaucer Subjects
Physician and His Tale.
Pardoner and His Tale.