Boethian 'Hert-huntyng': The Elegiac Pattern of 'The Book of the Duchess'

Author / Editor
Tisdale, Charles P. R.

Title
Boethian 'Hert-huntyng': The Elegiac Pattern of 'The Book of the Duchess'

Published
American Benedictine Review 24 (1973): 365-80.

Description
Commends BD for its reconciliation of extreme tones: despair derived from "earth-shattering sorrow" and "intellectual hope" derived from "heaven-sent consolation." Inspired by Bothus's "Consolation of Philosophy," Chaucer achieves consolation and reconciliation of tone through a "psychological patterning" that is manifest in his characterizations of narrator, dreamer, and Black Knight.

Chaucer Subjects
Book of the Duchess
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations