Pointless Piety and Pathos in Chaucer's Prioress's Tale

Author / Editor
Greenwood, Maria Katarzyna.

Title
Pointless Piety and Pathos in Chaucer's Prioress's Tale

Published
Colette Stévanovitch and René Tixier, eds. Surface et profondeur: Mélanges offerts à Guy Bourquin à l'occasion de son 75e anniversaire (Nancy: Association des Médiévistes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur, 2003), pp. 179-98.

Description
Piety and pathos heighten the impact of PrT and promote the narrator's reputation for religious correctness, yet all aspects of her Tale are undermined by pointlessness. Greenwood argues that the Tale is dialogistic and Menippean; a satirical subtext emerges out of the contrast between polysemia and aporia of expressions of feelings, on the one hand, and clarity and factual exposition, on the other.

Alternative Title
Surface et profondeur: Mélanges offerts à Guy Bourquin à l'occasion de son 75e anniversaire.

Chaucer Subjects
Prioress and Her Tale.