The Relyk of a Seint: A Gloss on Chaucer's Pilgrimage
- Author / Editor
- Knapp, Daniel.
The Relyk of a Seint: A Gloss on Chaucer's Pilgrimage
- Published
- ELH 39 (1972): 1-26.
- Description
- Describes various features of Thomas Becket's shrine at Canterbury as recorded in Erasmus's satiric "Peregrinatio Religionis Ergo," focusing on its account of Becket's "hair breeches" and suggesting that this relic underlies the Host's kissing-of-breeches verbal assault on the Pardoner in CT 3.948-50. Suggests further that Chaucer considered this relic a "pious fraud," evidence that he had "serious reservations" about pilgrimage as a spiritual exercise and that he never intended the shrine at Canterbury to be the culmination of CT.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Pardoner and His Tale
- Canterbury Tales--General