The 'Book of the Duchess,' Melancholy, and That Eight-Year Sickness
- Author / Editor
- Hill, John M.
The 'Book of the Duchess,' Melancholy, and That Eight-Year Sickness
- Published
- Chaucer Review 9 (1974): 35-50.
- Description
- Differentiates the lover's malady in BD from the traditional love-sickness found in its analogues, identifying the malady as a form of head melancholy curable by a good night's sleep, the narrator's only physician. The comic version of the tale of Ceyx and Alcyone reflects serious concern with fear of dying. Includes an appendix that treats the eight-year duration of the narrator's illness as a means to date the poem as commemorative rather than occasional.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Book of the Duchess
- Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations