Idleness, Chess, and Tables: Recuperating Fables in Chaucer's "Book of the Duchess."

Author / Editor
Barootes, B. S. W.

Title
Idleness, Chess, and Tables: Recuperating Fables in Chaucer's "Book of the Duchess."

Published
In Jamie C. Fumo, ed. Chaucer's "Book of the Duchess": Contexts and Interpretations (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2018), pp. 29-50.

Description
Considers the relations between BD and fourteenth-century devotional texts, particularly "Cursor mundi," that disparage "fable" as a form of idleness. Rejecting the popular association between consuming fiction and playing idle games, BD reclaims storytelling as "active, productive, and restorative," thus critiquing "medieval attitudes toward fiction."

Alternative Title
Book of the Duchess: Contexts and Interpretations .

Chaucer Subjects
Book of the Duchess
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations