Philosophical Chaucer

Love, Sex, and Agency in the Canterbury Tales
Erscheinungsjahr 2011
ISBN: 978-0-521-84236-5
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, Band 55, 302 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 644 g

Reihe: Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature

Mark Miller's innovative study argues that Chaucer's Canterbury Tales represent an extended mediation on agency, autonomy and practical reason. This philosophical aspect of Chaucer's interests can help us understand what is both sophisticated and disturbing about his explorations of love, sex and gender. Party through fresh readings of the Consolation of Philosophy and the Romance of the Rose, Miller charts Chaucer's position in relation to the association in the Christian West between problems of autonomy and problems of sexuality and reconstructs how medieval philosophers and literary writers approached psychological phenomena often thought of as distinctively modern. The literary experiments of the Canterbury Tales represent a distinctive philosophical achievement that remains vital to our own attempts to understand agency, desire and their histories.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Miller, Mark

Minnis, Alastair

Boyde, Patrick

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements; Introduction: Chaucer and the problem of normativity; 1. Naturalism and its discontents in the Miller's Tale; 2. Normative longing in the Knight's Tale; 3. Agency and dialectic in the Consolation of Philosophy; 4. Sadomasochism and utopia in the Roman de la Rose; 5. Suffering love in the Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale; 6. Love's promise: the Clerk's Tale and the scandal of the unconditional; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

Über Autor(innen)

Miller, Mark
Mark Miller is Associate Professor of English at the University of Chicago.