Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Stories for an Uncertain World : Agency in the Decameron and the Canterbury Tales / Robert W. Hanning.
A comparative study of Boccaccio's Decameron and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales that explores the differences and similarities between the worlds that are portrayed by each text, with a focus on the strategies and limits of personal agency, and the significance and social dynamics of story-tel...
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Full Text (via ProQuest) |
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Oxford ; New York, NY :
Oxford University Press,
2021.
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| Edition: | First edition. |
| Series: | Oxford studies in medieval literature and culture.
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Table of Contents:
- Introduction. Having the World by the Tale: A new comparative reading of the Decameron and the Canterbury Tales; A note on the text of the Canterbury Tales
- 1: Mapping the uncertain world Texts and contexts; The historical lineage and cultural breeding grounds of pragmatic prudence; Aristotle, Cicero, and the centrality of (moral) Prudence; The cultural parturition of an amoral prudence: three possible stimuli; Governance; Commerce; Institutional religion; Narrative antecedents; Fabulation: the triple challenge; Why tell? The function of the fabula in the Decameron and the Canterbury Tales; The mimetic topography of an uncertain world
- 2: Fortuna, Fama, and the challenge to agency; Fortuna; Fama
- 3: Can you trust the sign?: Uncertainty of signification, comprehension, and perception; Introduction; Language; Cosyn/cozzen; The instability of signifying systems; Decameron 3.2--destabilizing signs: "king for a night," or, the royal rod strikes again; "The Reeve's Tale": what the cradle will rock (or, "who's been sleeping in MY bed?")
- 4: The uncertainty of Intention; Introduction; Decameron 3.3: the confessor as go-between; Decameron 8.7: men and women behaving badly; The Wife of Bath, apostle of uncertainty; Authorities; Sexual contradictions: parody/exposure/seeking to outrage; Timothy; Jankyn; Postlude: the Pardoner makes the scene
- 5: Power; Introduction; Part 1: Phallic imprudence, or, Patriarchal power and the primal fear; Decameron 4.1: tragic agency; Part 2: the power of desire; Decameron 2.7: the power of desire, refracted through commerce and politics; "The Miller's Tale": Goddes pryvetee and the nye slye; "Goddes pryvetee": domesticating the cosmic and the prisoners of genre; When worlds collide: the clashing terrains of public and private desire in "The Miller's Tale."