Curiosity and Pilgrimage: The Literature of Discovery in Fourteenth-Century England.

Description: Investigates the relation between "curiositas" (vice-laden seeking of experience or knowledge) and pilgrimage (symbolic devotional journey) as a tension between desire for the physical and spiritual worlds, examining the theological underpinnings of the two concepts and exploring their depiction in Richard de Bury's "Philobiblon," Mandeville's "Travels," and Chaucer's CT. Throughout CT, "curiosity undermines pilgrimage" (92), reflecting the interpersonal competition and social tensions of Chaucer's late-medieval England. Part 1 and the Marriage Group "dwell on order and disorder among neighbors and spouses; this is followed by a middle group of tales that stresses the social damage of tale-telling; and the work ends with tales and a non-tale that put an end to tale-telling" (93). KnT, Mel, and ParsT pose standards of social, ethical, and moral stability that are countered by the other tales in various ways. Based on Zacher's Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Riverside, 1969, "'Curiositas and the Impulses for Pilgrimage in Fourteenth-Century English Literature," Dissertation Abstracts International 30.10 (1970).

Chaucer Subjects: Canterbury Tales--General; Knight and His Tale; Tale of Melibee; Parson and His Tale