'And countrefete the speche of every man / He koude, whan he sholde telle a tale' : Toward a Lapsarian Poetics for The Canterbury Tales

Author / Editor
Hanning, Robert W.

Title
'And countrefete the speche of every man / He koude, whan he sholde telle a tale' : Toward a Lapsarian Poetics for The Canterbury Tales

Published
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 21: 29-58, 1999.

Description
Assesses how MLH and MLP reflect the anxiety of Chaucer's poetics-how they indicate Chaucer's awareness that he is both following and improving upon the poetic model of Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron and the "penitential" poetics of John Gower's works. Chaucer appropriates Gower's confessional mode in ParsT, while WBP and PardP combat traditional discourse by being "lapsarian" confessions.

Alternative Title
Biennial Chaucer Lecture, the New Chaucer Society. Eleventh International Congress, 17-20 July 1998, UniversiteĢ€ de Paris IV-Sorbonne, Paris.

Chaucer Subjects
Canterbury Tales--General.
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations.
Man of Law and His Tale.
Wife of Bath and Her Tale.
Pardoner and His Tale.
Parson and His Tale.