Metatextual Moments in Chaucer

Author / Editor
Rowe, Donald W.

Title
Metatextual Moments in Chaucer

Published
Graven Images 1: 180-93, 1994.

Description
In The General Prologue, Troilus and Criseyde, The Legend of Good Women Prologue, The Friar's Tale, and The Summoner's Tale, Chaucer probes the indeterminacy of language and his own precarious use of words as means to truth. Discusses Diomede's use of "ambage" (TC 5.897), Pandarus as a "metalinguistic sign of the inadequacy of signs," the efficacy of cursing, and Chaucer's anxieties about using--and abusing--language. Surveys medieval rhetorical, philosophical, and theological attitudes to polyvalence.

Chaucer Subjects
Language and Word Studies.
Troilus and Criseyde.
Legend of Good Women.
General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.
Friar and His Tale.
Summoner and His Tale.