Chaucerian Ecopoetics: Deconstructing Anthropocentrism in the "Canterbury Tales."

Description: Theorizes ecopoetic criticism, considering anthropocentrism, anthropotropism, and the "writability" of voices, whether human or nonhuman. Considers the "turn" to the human that opens GP and how the "impenetrability" of the human in GP is "often marked by nonhuman imagery." KnT responds to GP by masking anthropotropism as "theotropic necessity," and MilT replaces the "ecophobia" of KnT with "brittle" biophilia based in a "conception of metaphor" undercut in RvT. Both FranT and PhyT "sabotage their own anthropotropism"; the "viable theotropism" of MkT (Nabugodonosor) is "abjected" in the interruptions of the Knight and Host. In CT the limits of language recurrently undermine "anthropocentric fantasies."

Chaucer Subjects: Canterbury Tales--General
General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales
Knight and His Tale
Miller and His Tale
Reeve and His Tale
Franklin and His Tale
Physician and His Tale
Monk and His Tale