"Countrefete Cheere": Kitsch, Taste, and "The Prioress's Tale."

Author / Editor
Dominick, Gina A.

Title
"Countrefete Cheere": Kitsch, Taste, and "The Prioress's Tale."

Published
Exemplaria 31 (2019): 1-21.

Description
Discusses kitsch as a "counter aesthetic" that results from a "failed dialectic of beauty and ugliness," and explores the Nazis' "Anti-Kitsch Law," Theodor Adorno's aesthetic theory, the Prioress's "countrefete cheere" and sentimentality, the gore and antisemitism of PrT, and the critical reception of the tale. Argues that PrT "exposes the form that makes . . . anti-Semitism and its stories enjoyable: the aesthetics of kitsch and death."

Chaucer Subjects
Prioress and Her Tale