What Comes After Chaucer's 'But': Adversative Constructions in Spenser

Author / Editor
Anderson, Judith H.

Title
What Comes After Chaucer's 'But': Adversative Constructions in Spenser

Published
Mary J. Carruthers and Elizabeth D. Kirk, eds. Acts of Interpretation (Norman, Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1982), pp. 105-18.

Description
Close reading of the uses of the conjunction "but" as an "illogical adversative" in Spenser's Proem to Book 6 of "The Faerie Queene," compared and contrasted with Chaucer's related uses in his GP. Generally, Chaucer's usage "serves narrative realism," while Spenser's "serves a realism that is essentially conceptual," although the latter is too reductionist because both poets use to various effects the "techniques and devices of duplicity."

Alternative Title
Acts of Interpretation

Chaucer Subjects
General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales
Style and Versification
Chaucer's Influence and Later Allusion
Language and Word Studies