Chaucer and the Trivium: The Mindsong of the Canterbury Tales

Description: Argues that medieval language theory and the arts of grammar, logic, and rhetoric inform CT. They provided Chaucer with his fundamental awareness of the slipperiness of language-its inability to represent truth and reality and its ability to distort as well as convince.; Also, as the source of Chaucer's understanding of human cognition, the trivium gave Chaucer the "mechanism for consciously evoking an image of the human individual" (203). Summarizes medieval education and its "implications" and discusses GP, KnT, MLT, and ClT as works in which the influence of the trivium on Chaucer's imagination and techniques is particularly clear. Includes brief discussion of WBP, MerT, FranT and Mel.

Chaucer Subjects: Canterbury Tales--General.; General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.; Knight and His Tale.; Man of Law and His Tale.; Clerk and His Tale.