The Canterbury Tales and the 'Via Moderna'
- Author / Editor
- Mertens-Foncke, Paule.
The Canterbury Tales and the 'Via Moderna'
- Published
- Poetica (Tokyo) 67 (2007): 37-51.
- Description
- The "structural features" of GP reflect "the medieval philosophical debate over universals" and the epistemology of the "via moderna." Chaucer's number and arrangement of pilgrims suggest the "inadequacy of categories," whereas the balanced opposition of the Prioress and the Wife of Bath echoes the genre of Clerk-Knight debates and obliquely engages the "nominalist concept of divine omnipotence." Other balancings in CT (and in the GP description of the Monk) reflect debate structure and the opposition between universality and particularity.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Canterbury Tales--General.
- General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.
- Prioress and Her Tale.
- Wife of Bath and Her Tale.
- Monk and His Tale.