Chaucerian Metapoetics and the Philosophy of Poetry.

Published: D.Phil. Dissertation. Oxford University, 2011. Fully accessible via http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:8cf424fd-124c-4cb0-9143-e436c5e3c2da (accessed April 4, 2026).

Description: Chaucer in the Platonic tradition of "philosophical poetry" where "poetry is a self-reflexive epistemological practice that interrogates the conditions of art in general." Includes chapters on the Pardoner's Old Man as a neo-Platonic Tithonus figure; "the machinery of atheism" in MilT as "sufficient grounds for the transformation of a fallen and contingent world into the only world whatsoever"; the humanization of Phoebus in ManT and its unification of "art and history into a single monistic experience"; and NPT as "ars poetica for the entire Chaucerian Performance" that "undercuts the naturalistic strategies of the first three poems by a long experiment in the philosophical conflict between art and history."

Chaucer Subjects: Background and General Criticism
Pardoner and His Tale
Miller and His Tale
Manciple and His Tale
Nun's Priest and His Tale