Chaucer and 'The Legend of Good Women'
- Author / Editor
- Frank, Robert Worth Jr.
Chaucer and 'The Legend of Good Women'
- Published
- Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972.
- Physical Description
- [xiv], 219 pp.
- Description
- Evaluates LGW as a series of brief narrative poems, assessing LGWP as an account of Chaucer's experiment with choosing a new subject matter for poetry (one that is "essentially alien to the code of courtly love") and gauging the importance of the larger poem in Chaucer's artistic development. Comments upon the aesthetic success of each legend, focusing on narrative techniques, stylistic highlights, and adaptations of source materials (especially Ovid); also gauges the quality of the integration of theme and technique, favoring brevity, unity, feeling or sentiment rather than moralism, and dramatic impact over embellishment. Concludes with an excursus that dismantles the traditional notion that Chaucer abandoned LGW out of boredom or weariness.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Legend of Good Women
- Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
- Style and Versification