'To wondre upon this thyng': Chaucer's Prioress's Tale

Author / Editor
Gayk, Shannon.

Title
'To wondre upon this thyng': Chaucer's Prioress's Tale

Published
Exemplaria 22 (2010): 138-56.

Description
PrT depicts "the production and exigencies of wonder" in concert with the ambiguity and inscrutability of the miraculous. The abbot reestablishes the distinction between the animate and the inanimate by removing the mysterious "greyn," which does not "produce song" but instead "prolongs wonder." Medieval religious wonder, in turn, may provoke both passivity before what cannot be assimilated and "an active desire to assimilate and appropriate it."

Chaucer Subjects
Prioress and Her Tale