Class Distinction in Chaucer.
- Author / Editor
- Brewer, D. S.
Class Distinction in Chaucer.
- Published
- Speculum 43 (1968): 290-305.
- Description
- Contemplates social status and social mobility in Chaucer's works, considering them in light of contemporaneous attitudes. Focuses on Chaucer's uses of "degree" and the ladder of degree as a "symbol of social mobility," inflected by Chaucer's comic worldly "cynicism" and his "profound religious skepticism" about such mobility. Also addresses the gentle / churl distinction in Chaucer's works as social and moral categories, as devices of characterization, and as reflections of Chaucer's own status.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Background and General Criticism
Chaucer's Life
Language and Word Studies