Chaucer's Language of Inevitability

Author / Editor
Johnson, W[illiam]. C., Jr.

Title
Chaucer's Language of Inevitability

Published
William C. Johnson and Loren C. Gruber, eds. "New" Views on Chaucer: Essays in Generative Criticism (Denver: Society for New Language Study, 1973), pp. 17-27.

Description
Exemplifies how Chaucer "frequently presents his characters as victims of a necessity that become meaningful not through its external operation as 'fortune,' but through its inner presence as an experience of 'emotional necessity'," illustrating this theme of the experience of fate in BD, KnT, and MerT. This focus on the relation of fate to personality foreshadows Renaissance sensibility.

Alternative Title
New Views on Chaucer: Essays in Generative Criticism.

Chaucer Subjects
Book of the Duchess
Knight and His Tale
Merchant and His Tale