Chaucerian Spaces: Spatial Poetics in Chaucer's Opening Tales
- Author / Editor
- Woods, William F.
Chaucerian Spaces: Spatial Poetics in Chaucer's Opening Tales
- Published
- Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008.
- Physical Description
- xi, 203 pp.
- Series
- SUNY Series in Medieval Studies.
- Description
- Woods discusses the effect and significance of space and place in seven tales of CT, exploring place as an index of character and space as a site of characteristic potential. In KnT, Theseus and the narrator consider chivalry analogous to nature; in MilT, Alysoun's household is a world for men. Symkyn's house in RvT is a place of advancement, in contrast to the countryside; in CkT, London is part of the interior world of the characters. Custance's return to Rome in MLT coincides with a collapse of narrative space. The Wife Bath projects her desires onto the landscape, but she also internalizes the world to accommodate her needs. In ShT, the wife makes her bedroom her own mercantile space, a parallel to the merchant's counting room.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Knight and His Tale
- Miller and His Tale
- Reeve and His Tale
- Cook and His Tale
- Man of Law and His Tale
- Wife of Bath and Her Tale
- Shipman and His Tale