Chaucer's Cuckoo and the Myth of Anthropomorphism

Author / Editor
Kordecki, Lesley.

Title
Chaucer's Cuckoo and the Myth of Anthropomorphism

Published
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 249-60.

Description
Argues that the cuckoo-merlin dialogue in PF deconstructs the traditional human-animal binary by presenting a "fleeting realization of anthropomorphism gone awry." The cuckoo's "brood parasitism . . . resolves itself into a mode of communal profit" and the poem becomes a "parody of overclassification."

Alternative Title
Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts.

Chaucer Subjects
Parliament of Fowls