| Description |
xi, 443 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 351-415) and index. |
| Contents |
The nun's priest's body, or Chaucer's sexual genius -- The nun's priest's tale as grammar school primer, Menippean parody, and Ars poetica -- Close reading: beginnings and endings -- Chaucer's heliotropes and the poetics of metaphor -- The noise of history -- Chaucerian horologics and the confounded reader -- The parodistic episteme: learning to behold The fox -- Moralitas. |
| Summary |
Chaucer's The Nun's Priest's Tale is one of the most popular of The Canterbury Tales. It is only 646 lines long, yet it contains elements of a beast fable, an exemplum, a satire, and other genres. There have been countless attempts to articulate the "real" meaning of the tale, but it has confounded the critics. Peter Travis contends that part of the fun and part of the frustration of trying to interpret the tale has to do with Chaucer's use of the tale to demonstrate the resistance of all literature to traditional critical practices. But the world of The Nun's Priest's Tale is so creative and so quintessentially Chaucerian that critics persist in writing about it. No one has followed the critical fortunes of Chauntecleer and his companions more closely over time than Peter Travis. One of the most important contributions of this book is his assessment of the tale's reception. Travis also provides an admirable discussion of genre: his analysis of parody and Menippean satire clarify how to approach works such as this tale that take pleasure in resisting traditional generic classifications. Travis also demonstrates that the tale deliberately invoked its readers' memories of specific grammar school literary assignments, and the tale thus becomes a miniaturized synopticon of western learning. Building on these analyses and insights, Travis's final argument is that The Nun's Priest's Tale is Chaucer's premier work of self-parody, an ironic apologia pro sua arte. The most profound matters foregrounded in the tale are not advertisements of the poet's achievements. Rather, they are poetic problems that Chaucer wrestled with from the beginning of his career and, at the end of that career, wanted to address in a concentrated, experimental, and parapoetic way. |
| Subject |
Chaucer, Geoffrey, -1400. Nun's priest's tale.
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English poetry -- Middle English, 1100-1500 -- History and criticism.
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| ISBN |
9780268042356 paperback alkaline paper |
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0268042357 paperback alkaline paper |
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