Concerning "Houres Twelve."
- Author / Editor
- Bronson, Bertrand H.
Concerning "Houres Twelve."
- Published
- Modern Language Notes 68, no. 8 (1953): 515-21.
- Description
- Suggests that Chaucer's recurrent use of the number twelve in BD carries with it "overtones of fulfillment, completion, finality," serving as a "unifying thread." Adducing "the medieval practice of time-keeping," development of the mechanical striking clock, and several details of BD, argues that the clock near the end of the poem (line 1322) strikes noon (not midnight), occurs within the dream rather than awakening the narrator from his sleep, and signaled to the medieval mind "an end and a beginning" as well as other reverberations unfamiliar to modern readers.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Book of the Duchess
Style and Versification
Background and General Criticism