Philosophical Chaucer : Love, Sex, and Agency in the Canterbury Tales

Description: Although Chaucer is often considered a poet of love or of philosophy, an examination of the philosophical facets of CT--especially practical reason, individual agency, and autonomy--illuminates the ideologies of sex, gender, and love within his works. This analysis encourages a reformulation and broadening of our understanding of ideology and practical reason and their relationship to normativity. In MilT and KnT, natural impulses are in tension with practical reason.; A reading of the Consolation of Philosophy provides a foundation for understanding "why normativity resists grounding in a comprehensive theory," illustrating in the Prisoner a tension between desire and action and thus exploring the mutually shaping forces of practical rationality and psychological phenomena. Close reading of the Roman de la Rose provides a better understanding of how these forces shape eroticism in Chaucer, especially as it appears in WBP, WBT, and ClT.

Chaucer Subjects: Canterbury Tales--General.; Knight and His Tale.; Miller and His Tale.; Wife of Bath and Her Tale.; Clerk and His Tale.; Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations.