Evolution Narrative et Polyphonie Littéraire dans l'Oeuvre de Geoffrey Chaucer.

Published: Ph.D. Dissertation. Université de Grenoble, 2014. Fully available via https://theses.fr/2014GRENL003 (accessed March 12, 2026).

Description: Argues that "Chaucer's decision to write in Middle-English . . . was consistent with an intellectual movement that was trying to give back to European vernaculars the prestige necessary to a genuine cultural production, which eventually led to the emergence of romance and of the modern novel. The assimilation of the specificities of the poetry of Chrétien de Troyes, Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun thus allowed Chaucer to give back to English poetry some of its respectability. Nonetheless, it was his discovery of the Divina Commedia that made him aware of the true potential of literature: Dante thus allowed him to free the dialogism of his creations and to give his poetry a first-rate polyphonic dimension. As a result, if Chaucer cannot be thought of as the father of English poetry, he is however the father of English prose and one of the main artisans of what Mikhail Bakhtin called the polyphonic novel."

Chaucer Subjects: Language and Word Studie
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
Chaucer's Influence and Later Allusion