Blake's Chaucer: Scholasticism 'post litteram'

Author / Editor
D'Agata d'Ottavi, Stefania.

Title
Blake's Chaucer: Scholasticism 'post litteram'

Published
Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. Mediaevalitas: Reading the Middle Ages (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1996), pp. 115-28.

Description
William Blake's painting "The Canterbury Pilgrims" and his commentary on it in a "Descriptive Catalog" (1809) are a "complex allegory of life, where the classicist belief in the imitation of nature is thoroughly discarded." Blake returns to a "scholastic" approach to art and life and rejects Chaucer's naturalism, sacrificing ambiguity to allegory.

Alternative Title
Mediaevalitas: Reading the Middle Ages.

Chaucer Subjects
Chaucer's Influence and Later Allusion.