The Unity of the Canterbury Tales.
- Author / Editor
- Baldwin, Ralph
The Unity of the Canterbury Tales.
- Published
- Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1953. Rpt. New York: AMS Press, 1971.
- Physical Description
- 112 pp.
- Series
- Anglistia, no. 5.
- Description
- Assesses CT as a "realized aesthetic whole" with "a unity and nuclear meaning which develops out of the 'cortex' of pilgrimage." In GP, imagery of springtime and renewal underpin the motif of pilgrimage, with its social and religious implications; the pilgrims are lifelike and representational; the chronology, immediate and eternal; the narrator, both pilgrim and poet. The "epilogue" of the poem comprises ParsPT and Ret, and "knits up" the pilgrimage, reflecting the "trespasses" or "sins" of the pilgrims and the poet's own contrition. Although CT "is incomplete, it cannot properly be called unfinished."
- Chaucer Subjects
- Canterbury Tales--General
General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales
Parson and His Tale
Chaucer's Retraction