Masks of the Unconscious: Bad Faith and Casuistry in the Dramatic Monologue

Author / Editor
Shaw, W. David.

Title
Masks of the Unconscious: Bad Faith and Casuistry in the Dramatic Monologue

Published
ELH 66 : 439-60, 1999.

Description
Reader-response analysis of various dramatic monologues. Shaw focuses on the dramatic monologues of Robert Browning and other Victorians but clarifies the functions of deception, self-deception, casuistry, irony, double irony, and Sartre's concept of "bad faith" by assessing works of Chaucer, Donne, the Earl of Rochester, and others. Shaw describes the Pardoner as a "simple liar" and examines the potential for double ironies in the GP description of the Wife of Bath and in WBP, focusing on "daungerous" (3.151) in the latter.

Chaucer Subjects
Wife of Bath and Her Tale.
Pardoner and His Tale.