Chaucer's Secular Marvels and the Medieval Economy of Wonder
- Author / Editor
- Lightsey, Scott.
Chaucer's Secular Marvels and the Medieval Economy of Wonder
- Published
- Studies in the Age of Chaucer 23: 289-316, 2001.
- Description
- Commerce in automatons, mechanical contrivances, and other marvels or mirabilia in late-medieval Europe diminished the wonder of such objects and encouraged scepticism. Chaucer's FranT and SqT rationalize the marvels they present in ways that indicate the poet's ambivalence, a combination of his technological awareness and the legacy of romance wonders.
- For a revised version, see Lightsey's Manmade Marvels in Medieval Culture and Literature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), chapter 2.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Franklin and His Tale.
- Squire and His Tale.