Chaucer and the Mystics: "The Canterbury Tales" and the Genre of Devotional Prose
- Author / Editor
- Boenig, Robert.
Chaucer and the Mystics: "The Canterbury Tales" and the Genre of Devotional Prose
- Published
- Lewisburg, Penn.: Bucknell University Press, 1995.
- Physical Description
- 231 pp.
- Description
- Similarities between Chaucer and the Middle English mystics do not imply a conscious intention on his part either to imitate the mystics or to parody them ironically.
- Chaucer may or may not have known the works of Pseudo-Dionysius, Margery Kemp, Richard Rolle, and Julian of Norwich, but these mystics were part of the cultural, social, and political circumscriptions that helped shape his texts.
- CT shares specific ideas, "topoi," and motifs with the large body of Middle English mystical and devotional treatises.
- In addition, the mystics' doubts about the valency of language may partially explain Chaucer's persistent fragmentation and his tendency toward simultaneous affirmation and denial, as demonstrated by Chauntecleer's mistranslation of his Latin tag in NPT and by the spiritual erasure of a series of tales in Ret.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Canterbury Tales--General.
- Nun's Priest and His Tale.
- Chaucer's Retraction.