'Ignotum per ignocius': Alchemy, Analogy, and Poetics in Fragment VIII of The Canterbury Tales
- Author / Editor
- O'Connell, Brendan.
'Ignotum per ignocius': Alchemy, Analogy, and Poetics in Fragment VIII of The Canterbury Tales
- Published
- Kathy Cawsey and Jason Harris, eds. Transmission and Transformation in the Middle Ages: Texts and Contexts (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007), pp. 131-56.
- Description
- Chaucer addresses the "late medieval attack on analogical thought through his discussion of the failure of alchemy." SNT presents analogical thinking through its clear, but bridgeable, contrasts of spirit and body, whereas CYT offers an uncertain relationship between the two. Moreover, poetry--like alchemy--may suffer from uncertainty about the relationship between the universal and the particular.
- Alternative Title
- Transmission and Transformation in the Middle Ages: Texts and Contexts.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Canon's Yeoman and His Tale
- Second Nun and Her Tale.