The Man of Law's Tale: A Tragedy of Victimization and a Christian Comedy
- Author / Editor
- Bloomfield, Morton W.
The Man of Law's Tale: A Tragedy of Victimization and a Christian Comedy
- Published
- PMLA 87 (1972): 384-90.
- Description
- Assesses modern "unease" with Chaucer's "pathetic" tales, focusing on the combination of the "superficially tragic and the slightly comic" aspects of MLT in which the subject matter invites audience sympathy or empathy while the style encourages aesthetic distance. The narrator's apostrophes, Constance's passivity, and the happy ending for a poor victim of this "pathetic romance" create contradictions for modern readers that are consistent with medieval distrust of the world ("contemptus mundi") which views tragic suffering in human life as ultimately comic. An "earlier form" of this essay was published in Italian: "Il 'Racconto dell'Uomo di Legge: La Tragedia di una Vittima e la Commedia Cristiana" Strumenti Critici 3 (1969): 195-207.
- Alternative Title
- "Il 'Racconto dell'Uomo di Legge: La Tragedia di una Vittima e la Commedia Cristiana."
- Chaucer Subjects
- Man of Law and His Tale