Inaug.-diss.--Upsala. / "Works consulted": p. [v]-ix.

Inaug.-diss.--Upsala. / "Works consulted": p. [v]-ix.

Inaug.-Diss.--Zürich. "Literaturverzeichnis," p. [143]-145. / Lebenslauf.

Thesis--Berlin. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. [3]-4).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wyoming, 2009. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on July 14, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 51-52).

Condensation of Thesis (Ph. D.)--Vanderbilt University, 1946. / "Private edition, distributed by the Joint university libraries, Nashville, Tennessee." Includes bibliographical references.

The late Middles Ages saw the development in Europe of increasingly complex, ambitious, and self-conscious forms of creative literature. In the works of poets such as Dante, Petrarch and Chaucer new models of authorship and poetic identity were being explored, new kinds of philosophical and aesthetic value attributed to literary discourse. But these creative developments also brought with them new dangers and tensions, a sense of guilt and uncertainty about the value of creative literature, especially in relation to the dominant religious values of late medieval culture. In this thesis I explore how these doubts and tensions find expression in Chaucer’s poetry, not only as a negative, constraining influence, but also as something which contributes to the shape and meaning of poetry itself. I argue that as Chaucer develops his own expansive, questioning poetics in The House of Fame and The Canterbury Tales, he problematises the principle of allegory on which the legitimacy of literary discourse was primarily based in medieval culture and the final fragments of The Canterbury Tales see Chaucer struggling, increasingly, to reconcile the boldness and independence of his poetic vision with the demands of his faith. This struggle, which emerges most strongly and polemically in the final fragments, I argue, runs in subtle and creative forms throughout the whole of Chaucer’s work. By seeing Chaucer in this light as a poet not of fixed, but of conflicted and vacillating intentions – a poet productively caught drawn between ‘game’ and ‘earnest’, radical ironies and Boethian truths – I attempt to account, in a holistic manner, for the major dichotomies that characterise both his work and its critical reception.

While Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde is not, strictly speaking, a translation, it is heavily indebted both to the medieval understanding of Trojan historiography and to Boccacio's handling of the romance of Troiolo and Criseida in his Filostrado. While Chaucer was a capable translator with respect and fondness for Boccaccio's text, he was also a confident innovator who was quite willing to modify, append, or totally change the text whenever the needs of his particular narrative warrant it. One such site of this deliberate alteration is in the handling of the character of Priam, King of Troy. While Chaucer includes every passage in which Boccaccio mentions Priam, he consistently modifies the phrasing or situation in order to downplay the king's political role, emphasizing instead his interpersonal or familial bonds. Furthermore, the material that Chaucer adds concerning Priam expands the changes made in translation, furthering a move away from the social and political and toward the personal and the individual. This example, one of many, indicates that Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde is a work constructed around history that tries to suppress the political and historical, attempting instead to interpret events and characters in terms of their most immediate, personal settings or, when pressed, by eternal truths such as Love or Fortune. Such a focus allows us to see the "depth" of the individual or the philosophical foundations of their faith while attempting to deny the political and ideological construction of this subjectivity and belief.

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