Seeing the "Gawain"-Poet: Description and the Act of Perception
- Author / Editor
- Stanbury, Sarah.
Seeing the "Gawain"-Poet: Description and the Act of Perception
- Published
- Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991.
- Physical Description
- x, 155 pp.
- Series
- The Middle Ages Series
- Description
- Argues in detail that the "Gawain"-poet develops a "visually focused descriptive poetic" in his works and, by way of conclusion, asks whether such a poetic is unusual in late-medieval English literature, going on to treat works by Chaucer, "Sir Orfeo," the mystics, and more. Chaucer is often more "panoramic than particular" in his visual representations (e.g., in KnT and BD) and generally more concerned "with the relationship between perception and action" than with dramatizing "a character's understanding." He also tends to separate visual, sensory epistemology from other ways of knowing and perceiving (e.g., in SNT and MerT).
- Chaucer Subjects
- Knight and His Tale
- Book of the Duchess
- Second Nun and Her Tale
- Merchant and His Tale