Artistic Ambivalence in Chaucer's Knight's Tale.
- Author / Editor
- Thurston, Paul T.
Artistic Ambivalence in Chaucer's Knight's Tale.
- Published
- Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1968.
- Physical Description
- x, 240 pp.; 1 b&w illus.
- Description
- Argues that "for the sophisticated reader" KnT satirizes the "hallowed institutions of the chivalric tradition and their literary and supposed societal foundations." While "literal-minded" readers may justifiably find that the Tale "idealizes the faded age of chivalry" and the genre of "metrical romance," closer attention to Chaucer's treatment of romance elements reveals deep-seated ambivalence about the romance genre and its underlying ethos, both undercut by recurrent humor in the Tale, communicated through exaggerated epic conventions (in comparison with Boccaccio's "Teseida") and inconsistent treatment of the courtly code of love.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Knight and His Tale
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations