This thesis examines Chaucer's "The Man of Law's Tale" from the "Canterbury Tales," and includes a comparison of the narrative treatment of Chaucer's, Gower's and Trivet's tales of Constance.

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Though much has been made of Chaucer's saintly characters, relatively little has been made of Chaucer's approach to hagiography. While strictly speaking Chaucer produced only one true saint's life (the Second Nun's Tale), he was repeatedly intrigued and challenged by exemplary literature. The few studies of Chaucer's use of hagiography have tended to claim either his complete orthodoxy as hagiographer, or his outright parody of the genre. My study mediates the orthodoxy/parody split by viewing Chaucer as a serious, but self-conscious, hagiographer, one who experimented with the possibilities of exemplary narrative and explored the rhetorical tensions intrinsic to the genre, namely the tensions between transcendence and imminence, reverence and identification, and epideictic deliberative discourse.

The author commences with an analysis of the nature of completeness in a variety of situations and media, including visual arts, music, video arts and literature. "Completeness" is determined to be both difficult to define and subject to any individual's personal interpretation. A distinction is made between the 'finished-ness' of works and their completeness as a factor in aesthetic enjoyment. It is noted that some works, though unfinished, are nevertheless complete aesthetically. Various aspects of completeness are defined, discussed, and considered, including absolute, thematic, plot, authorial, segmental, inclusive, emotional, anticipatory, source/material, functional, and formal completeness. It is proposed that the more of these aspects of completeness present in a work, the more complete the work will seem. Examples illustrating each of the different aspects of completeness are given. The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer, is examined with reference to the proposed aspects of completeness. The various ways in which the work can be and has been considered incomplete are discussed. The four fragmentary Tales in The Canterbury Tales--The Cook's Tale, The Squire's Tale, The Tale of Sir Thopas, and The Monk's Tale--are examined. First, the ways in which they can be considered incomplete are considered; next, the ways in which they can be considered complete despite being fragmentary are discussed. The Canterbury Tales as a whole (if fragmentary) work is discussed. Its fragmentary nature is considered and possible explanations for difficulties are given. A case is made for considering The Canterbury Tales to be aesthetically complete and satisfying piece of literature as it stands.

In the Middle Ages, marriage represented a shift in the balance of power for both men and women. Struggling to define what constitutes the ideal marriage in medieval society, the marriage group of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales attempts to reconcile the ongoing battle for sovereignty between husband and wife. Existing hierarchies restricted women; therefore, marriage fittingly presented more obstacles for women. Chaucer creates the dynamic personalities of the Wife of Bath, the Clerk and the Merchant to debate marriage intelligently while citing their experiences within marriage in their prologues. The rhetorical device of ethos plays a significant role for the pilgrims. By first establishing their authority, each pilgrim sets out to provide his or her audience with a tale of marriage that is most correct. Chaucer's work as a social commentary becomes rhetorically complex with varying levels of ethos between Chaucer the author, his tale tellers and their characters.

This dissertation considers the literary treatment of revenge in medieval England and Iceland. Vengeance and feud were an essential part of these cultures; far from the reckless, impulsive action that the word conjures up in modern minds, revenge was considered both a right and a duty and was legislated and regulated by social norms. It was an important tool for obtaining justice and protecting property, family, and reputation. Accordingly, many medieval literary works seem to accept revenge without question. Many, however, evince a great sensitivity to the ambiguities and paradoxes inherent in an act of revenge. In my study, I consider three works that are emblematic of this responsiveness to and indeed, anxiety about revenge. Chapter one focuses on the Old English poem Beowulf; chapter two moves on to discuss Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale and Tale of Melibee from the Canterbury Tales; and chapter three examines the Old Icelandic family saga, Ljósvetninga saga. I focus in particular on the treatment of the avenger in each work. The poet or author of each work acknowledges the perspective of the avenger by allowing him to express his motivations, desires, and justifications for revenge in direct speech. Alongside this acknowledgement, however, is the author’s own reflection on the risks, rewards, and repercussions of the avenger’s intentions and actions. The resulting parallel but divergent narratives highlight the multiplicity of viewpoints found in any act of revenge or feud and reveal a fundamental ambivalence about the value, morality, and necessity of revenge. Each of the works I consider resists easy conclusions about revenge in its own context and remains incredibly current in the way it poses challenging questions about what constitutes injury, punishment, justice, and revenge in our own time.

This dissertation considers the literary treatment of revenge in medieval England and Iceland. Vengeance and feud were an essential part of these cultures; far from the reckless, impulsive action that the word conjures up in modern minds, revenge was considered both a right and a duty and was legislated and regulated by social norms. It was an important tool for obtaining justice and protecting property, family, and reputation. Accordingly, many medieval literary works seem to accept revenge without question. Many, however, evince a great sensitivity to the ambiguities and paradoxes inherent in an act of revenge. In my study, I consider three works that are emblematic of this responsiveness to and indeed, anxiety about revenge. Chapter one focuses on the Old English poem Beowulf; chapter two moves on to discuss Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale and Tale of Melibee from the Canterbury Tales; and chapter three examines the Old Icelandic family saga, Ljósvetninga saga. I focus in particular on the treatment of the avenger in each work. The poet or author of each work acknowledges the perspective of the avenger by allowing him to express his motivations, desires, and justifications for revenge in direct speech. Alongside this acknowledgement, however, is the author’s own reflection on the risks, rewards, and repercussions of the avenger’s intentions and actions. The resulting parallel but divergent narratives highlight the multiplicity of viewpoints found in any act of revenge or feud and reveal a fundamental ambivalence about the value, morality, and necessity of revenge. Each of the works I consider resists easy conclusions about revenge in its own context and remains incredibly current in the way it poses challenging questions about what constitutes injury, punishment, justice, and revenge in our own time.

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.

The purpose of this study is to compare the narrative and framing techniques used by Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower. These authors were selected for several reasons. Being contemporaries, they lived through the days of the reign of Richard II, his deposition, and the accession of Henry IV. This was a time change: the age of chivalry and true knighthood was ending; the middle class was establishing commerce, towns, guilds; openly and violently the peasants were beginning to reject their servile positions; the corruption within the organized church was being publicly exposed, and efforts, believed heretical by some, were being made to effect its purification. The discussion in this paper will be limited to the major work of each author. For Gower this is the Confessio Amantis, his only English work of any length; for Chaucer it is the Canterbury Tales, which, incomplete as it is, is generally accepted as the crown jewel of medieval English literature. The discussion wil be limited further to the framing and linking devices and to the four tales which appear in both books: "Constance" (Man of Law's tale), "Florent" (Wife of Bath's tale), "Phebus and Cornide" (Manciple's tale), and "Virginia" (Physician's tales).