Towards a Rhetoric of Youth: Readings in Augustine and Selected Medieval Narratives

Author / Editor
Spearman, Robert Alan.

Title
Towards a Rhetoric of Youth: Readings in Augustine and Selected Medieval Narratives

Published
Dissertation Abstracts International 58 (1998): 4672A.

Description
Constructs an Augustinian "rhetoric of youth" to assess the depictions of infancy, childhood, and youth in Boethius's "De consolatione philosophiae," Innocent III's "De miseria condicionis humane," and the "Roman de la rose." Then considers how Chaucer resists this tradition in BD, PF, HF, and TC.

Chaucer Subjects
Background and General Criticism.
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations.
Book of the Duchess.
Parliament of Fowls.
House of Fame.
Troilus and Criseyde.