The Narrator Asleep and Awake in Chaucer's 'Book of the Duchess'

Author / Editor
Cherniss, Michael D.

Title
The Narrator Asleep and Awake in Chaucer's 'Book of the Duchess'

Published
Papers on Language and Literature 8 (1972): 115-26

Description
Argues that the obtuse narrator's misreading of the Ovidian story of Ceyx and Alcyone in BD misleads him and underlies the poem's general encouragement that people must accept misfortune. The narrator within the dream is not obtuse, but he does not carry his perspicuity into a wakeful state.

Chaucer Subjects
Book of the Duchess
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations