Saint Cecilia's "Chemical Wedding": The Unity of the "Canterbury Tales," Fragment VIII.

Author / Editor
Grennen, Joseph E.

Title
Saint Cecilia's "Chemical Wedding": The Unity of the "Canterbury Tales," Fragment VIII.

Published
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 65 (1966): 466-81.

Description
Demonstrates the "relationship in theme and imagery" between SNPT and CYPT and the "controlling design that links them artistically." Posits that SNT may have been based on a Gnostic version of the Cecilia legend, an alchemical allegory of the "chemical wedding," helping to account for the parallels and inversions between the two Tales: concern with work and busyness, unity and multiplicity, the imagery of fire, stones, and blindness, and such "orthodox religious ideals such as zeal and perseverance."

Chaucer Subjects
Second Nun and Her Tale
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
Canon's Yeoman and His Tale