Morality and Immorality

Published: Corinne Saunders, ed. A Concise Companion to Chaucer (Malden, Mass.; Oxford; and Victoria: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 199-217.

Description: Green confronts "the interpretive function of morality in medieval literature" and discusses why Chaucer's "moral horizons" in CT are elusive. Many of the Tales include competing morals; frameworks such as estates satire and the seven deadly sins were adapted to different ends and contested by different perspectives. Language itself accommodates "disparate moral standards," evident in the changing meanings of "trouthe" in the late fourteenth century.