Chaucer's Good Fair White: Woman and Symbol.
- Author / Editor
- Manning, Stephen.
Chaucer's Good Fair White: Woman and Symbol.
- Published
- Comparative Literature 10.2 (1958): 97-105.
- Description
- Contrasts the sorrows of the Dreamer and of Alcyone with that of the Man in Black in BD, arguing that the first two serve to elevate the intensity of the latter. Then examines the epideitic praise of Blanche/White as a form of personification that achieves symbolic value. Reflecting the idealized connotations of whiteness, she represents beauty, goodness, and "mesure," and her death, drawn from the tradition of troubadour courtly conventions, signals the passing of all worldly virtue.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Book of the Duchess
Style and Versification
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations