The Opening of Chaucer's General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales : A Diptych
- Author / Editor
- Wilcockson, Colin.
The Opening of Chaucer's General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales : A Diptych
- Published
- Review of English Studies 50: 345-50, 1999.
- Description
- The initial thirty-four lines of GP divide into two sections of sixteen lines joined by a couplet and emphasized by capitalization in the Ellesmere manuscript. The first section treats general matters; the second, particulars. Chaucer structures the diptych with elaborate verbal symmetries focusing on death and rebirth; repeated nouns and rhyme-words confirm the pattern. As well, numerology, especially St. Augustine's exegesis of the number seventeen, highlights the spiritual significance of the division.
- Reprinted in Harold Bloom, ed. Rebirth and Renewal (New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2009), pp. 51-60.
- Alternative Title
- Rebirth and Renewal.
- Chaucer Subjects
- General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.
- Manuscripts and Textual Studies.