Aspects of Subjectivity: Society and Individuality from the Middle Ages to Shakespeare and Milton

Author / Editor
Low, Anthony.

Title
Aspects of Subjectivity: Society and Individuality from the Middle Ages to Shakespeare and Milton

Published
Pittsburgh, Penn. : Duquesne University Press, 2003.

Physical Description
xxi, 242 pp.

Series
Medieval & Renaissance Literary Studies

Description
Subjectivity and a sense of the importance of the inner self and the individual developed gradually from the early Middle Ages to the seventeenth century. Nothing is altogether new in the stunning early-modernist sense of a vast, inner world of the self. What is new is the sense that the world within is more real than the world outside. Chaucer's Pardoner displays little awareness of his inner self. His despicable character and behavior make him a negative exemplar, whom Chaucer holds up for his audience's blame and execration.

Chaucer Subjects
Pardoner and His Tale.