Complex Irony in Chaucer

Description: Explores how "complex irony in Chaucer has the effect of affirming both sides in a conflict or both terms in an opposition," discussing the device in TC, KnT, NPT, PardPT, and the end of the CT. Includes discussion of Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" as a philosophical resolution of the opposition of freedom and necessity and how, at times, Chaucer eschews irony, oppositions, and paradoxes and asserts his own point of view.

Chaucer Subjects: Style and Versification; Troilus and Criseyde; Canterbury Tales--General; Knight and His Tale; Nun's Priest and His Tale; Pardoner and His Tale; Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations