Contemplating Finitude: Animals in The Book of the Duchess
- Author / Editor
- Roman, Christopher.
Contemplating Finitude: Animals in The Book of the Duchess
- Published
- Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 143-55.
- Description
- Animals figure prominently in BD but are more than mere symbols. Ceyx's dead body is also an "unnatural animal." The birds, horse, whelp, and hart invite, but also resist, interpretation. The juxtaposition of death and animalistic vitality evokes grief, which itself is the simultaneous awareness of being present in life and of death. The animals in the poem help us to "think about finitude."
- Alternative Title
- Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Book of the Duchess
- Style and Versification