Narrative Focus in "The Book of the Duchess."
- Author / Editor
- Stevens, Martin.
Narrative Focus in "The Book of the Duchess."
- Published
- Annuale Mediaevale 7 (1966): 16-32.
- Description
- Treats the narrator-dreamer of BD as the poem's "central character" and a device of unity and dramatic irony. The character does not "develop" psychologically, but his polite good nature--comically limited by his ignorance of courtly idiom--enables Chaucer to affirm faith in the "Christian doctrine of endurance" in the face of fortune. The Black Knight does not escape the "inefficacy" of courtly sentiment.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Book of the Duchess