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Call number: LD2668 .T4 1930 D71

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1956 H55 / Master of Science

The Reeve’s Prologue in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales represents one of the most prominent medieval narratives of old age. In his bitter tirade the Reeve emphasizes the topics of impotence, sexuality, power and voice through a series of metaphors involving horses, leeks, coals, and medlar fruit. Though the Prologue itself has been extensively discussed, little of the discussion has been in the context of age studies. Nor have scholars paid much attention to the medlar, called by its colloquial name “open-ers.” The Reeve chooses to describe himself and other older men through this unmistakably sexualized and repulsive term, raising paradoxical issues of rottenness and ripeness. He uses the medlar to resist fourteenth-century age culture and reconfigure his identity into a submissive, open one. Where impotence has removed agency and voice, this new identity enables a feminized voice, a claim to desire, and an ability to quyte the Miller for what the Reeve perceived as an ageist story meant to mock him. However, a Lacanian reading suggests that in grappling with his impotence, the Reeve has come to realize the futility of signifying and the difficulties of expressing desire. The Reeve’s Prologue thus exposes the breakdown of desire in the Reeve’s Tale and raises larger questions about the influence of older age on tale-telling, especially in a masculine register. / text

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This thesis examines the role of conventions of setting in Chaucerian dream poetry. Setting, by my definition, refers not only to the physical features of landscape in these dreams, such as bedchambers and gardens, but also the position of the genre of dream poetry itself within wider literary contexts. I argue that conventions of setting, familiar themes or locations which create expectations in the reader about the content of the dream itself, provide a valuable and largely overlooked perspective upon the genre of Chaucerian dream poetry. By paying close attention to the way that conventions of setting are combined and altered in the landscapes of Chaucerian dream poetry, we can understand more fully the lines of authorial influence that shape the genre, particularly by considering conventional settings such as the temple of glass that are used by a number of different dream poets in differing contexts. Moreover, by considering the dream in its broader setting or context, as autobiographical reflection, mnemonic device, and simultaneous lament for the ephemeral nature of literature and attempt to preserve oneself for posterity, I argue that we can better understand the nature of the genre as a whole. Throughout, I offer an understanding of the Chaucerian dream poem not only as it was written, but also as it was read and responded to, both by contemporary authors and readers, and later critics.

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My project is founded on an inter-genre, comparative approach between Chaucers <i>Franklins Tale</i> from the Canterbury collection, and Jean Froissarts <i>Chroniques</i>, the innovative and epic account of French history in the thirteenth century. I have adopted a method of thematic comparison between the two in an effort to illuminate parallels of example and authorial intent in the works of these almost exactly contemporaneous authors. My thesis therefore becomes a selective examination of the ethical functions of their literature.<p>Twentieth century scholarship focusing on the similarities between Geoffrey Chaucer and Jean Froissart has left little doubt that the two shared numerous sources and analogues in selections of their poetry, were at least aware of each other personally, and were born into similar social backgrounds. What remains to be done, and what has received little critical attention in the decades since serious work began on the similarities between them, is a study of the ideological values that Chaucer and Froissart shared specifically evidenced in their writing. The ideas they wanted to promote, the contemporary moral and social debates they engaged in, are equally as fascinating as the similarities in their love poetry. I intend to go beyond the biographical and source study that has dominated discussion on Chaucer and Froissart and embark on a project of tracing thematic parallels in two of their works, specifically focusing on the issue that I find most obvious between them: the desire to create and record literary discussions of ethical behaviour.

My project is founded on an inter-genre, comparative approach between Chaucers <i>Franklins Tale</i> from the Canterbury collection, and Jean Froissarts <i>Chroniques</i>, the innovative and epic account of French history in the thirteenth century. I have adopted a method of thematic comparison between the two in an effort to illuminate parallels of example and authorial intent in the works of these almost exactly contemporaneous authors. My thesis therefore becomes a selective examination of the ethical functions of their literature.<p>Twentieth century scholarship focusing on the similarities between Geoffrey Chaucer and Jean Froissart has left little doubt that the two shared numerous sources and analogues in selections of their poetry, were at least aware of each other personally, and were born into similar social backgrounds. What remains to be done, and what has received little critical attention in the decades since serious work began on the similarities between them, is a study of the ideological values that Chaucer and Froissart shared specifically evidenced in their writing. The ideas they wanted to promote, the contemporary moral and social debates they engaged in, are equally as fascinating as the similarities in their love poetry. I intend to go beyond the biographical and source study that has dominated discussion on Chaucer and Froissart and embark on a project of tracing thematic parallels in two of their works, specifically focusing on the issue that I find most obvious between them: the desire to create and record literary discussions of ethical behaviour.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 1903.