The 'Reeve's Tale' and the Comedy of Limitation

Author / Editor
Frank, Robert Worth, Jr.

Title
The 'Reeve's Tale' and the Comedy of Limitation

Published
Stanley Weintraub and Philip Young, eds. Directions in Literary Criticism: Contemporary Approaches to Literature (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1973), pp. 53-69.

Description
Reads RvP as a "confession of old age" and RvT as a "tribute" to unrestrained passion and an extension of the concern with love in KnT and MilT. Compares RvT with its analogues, and comments on its characterizations, the straightforwardness of its comedy, its style, and its thematic concerns with "space and place" and with the "inescapable reality of the real world."

Contributor
Weintraub, Stanley, ed.
Young, Philip, ed.

Alternative Title
Directions in Literary Criticism: Contemporary Approaches to Literature.

Chaucer Subjects
Reeve and His Tale
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
Style and Versification