Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Full text release at OhioLINK's ETD Center delayed at author's request

This thesis has examined the individual accomplishments of Geoffrey Chaucer and Giovanni Boccaccio in terms of their parallel characters and stories. The Chaucerian works used in this study are three stories from The Canterbury Tales: The Knight’s Tale, The Franklin’s Tale, and The Clerk’s Tale. Chaucer’s art of story telling, as exhibited within these stories, has been directly compared to parallel characters and plots taken from the works of Giovanni Boccaccio: The Teseida, The Filocolo, and The Decameron. A direct comparison of Chaucer’s method in creation of character, suspense, and plot to those of Boccaccio has allowed a true estimate of the value of both authors.In addition, it has been possible to examine what Chaucer and Boccaccio found in separate sources but wished to treat differently, what Chaucer saw directly in the works of Boccaccio and wanted to change, and the method of treatment as related to the maturation of the separate writers.

In this thesis I discuss aspects of Chaucer's interest in the relation of Language to the reality which it attempts to express and the relation of poetic fiction to Christian truth, and the type of readerly response invited by this interest. The method employed includes analysis of the structural development of the narrative frame and, to a lesser degree, of the entirety of the poem, as well as discussion of the historical context of the issues under consideration. These issues are raised in the narrative frame of the Canterbury Tales and are explored there and in the individual tales. Their treatment in the narrative frame is seminal and has provided the major focus of discussion in what follows. The narrative frame structure operates dually. In the diachrony of a first reading of the poem, the frame world provides a correlative to the actual world in which man experiences serial time. The realignments of interpretation necessary because of its changing claims regarding its own nature — and hence its changing demands upon its readers — are constant reminders of the relativity of human judgment and experience in space and time. "rn the synchrony inevitable in a second or subsequent Lng, which comprehends the entirety of the poem at each point in its linear progression, the reader's position outside the poem's time span of past, present and future, is analogous to the poet’s in his original conception of the poem and to God's in relation to the actual world, which the poem's world imitates. After a first reading the reader sees that initially Chaucer's truth claim has enabled him to trust the authenticity of the account and to regard it not as poetic invention but as a report of historical truth.

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This thesis deals with the interpretation of art, set against the background of the medieval Christian Neoplatonism of John Scotus Eriugena. For him, art and philosophy are regarded as the handmaidens of meaning. Therefore, although this thesis begins with a consideration of Eriugena's Periphyseon, it develops into a discussion on aesthetic theory, and ultimately into one on poetic theory. The object of this discussion is to account for meaning in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde according to Eriugenian poetics. / The essence of art will thus be pursued within the parameters of the Neoplatonic scala natura. In this way, the whole poetic interpretation of Chaucer's poem is grasped as a mirror of the ontological exitus-reditus pattern. In understanding the poem this way, this thesis comes to immediate terms with the medieval concept of the imago Dei, and understands the likeness of mankind to God to be primarily one made by virtue of language.

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The language of Chaucer bears a close relationship to his versification, meter, and rhyme. Chaucer's experimentation in a variety of verse forms in his career as a poet show how he tried to deal with the English language that was then undergoing major changes in phonology, morphology, and syntax.This thesis has analyzed the grammatical characteristics and syntax of selected Chaucerian rhyme words and has established the frequency of phrasal constituent structures in the sample. The sample consists of random groups of 1,000 lines from 12 tales which are divided into four groups in terms of the periods of writing date. In addition, those 12 tales have been classified into two types according to their rhyme scheme. The findings demonstrate that:1. The nominal rhyme is used most frequently and twice as much as the verbal rhyme.2. There is a tendency that the verbal rhyme is less frequently used in the heroic couplet writings but more often used in the rhyme royal writings.3. The adjective and adverbial rhymes seem to occur almost equally in ratio.4. There is a tendency that the nominal rhyme appears most frequently in the noun phrase functioning as an object of the preposition.5. Concerning the adverbial rhyme, the highest usage is as one indicating manner.6. There is a tendency that, in accordance with the progress of the periods, the frequency of the nominal rhyme gradually increases while the verbaladverbial rhymes, on the contrary, decrease.7. It is likely that the frequency variation might be caused by the progress of the periods, not by the type of rhyme scheme.8. Chaucer seems to prefer the minimal phrase to the expanded one.