<p>This dissertation applies Paul
Ricœur’s theory of narrative identity to Chaucer’s poetry. The idea of a
narrative subjectivity addresses gaps and synthesizes key movements in Chaucer
studies, engaging with key scholars such as George Lyman Kittridge, Carolyn
Dinshaw, A.C. Spearing, and Mary Carruthers. Using Ricœur’s hermeneutic
phenomenology, the chapters articulate how narrative is necessary to the
construction and expression of both individual and collective identity and
experience. Each chapter focuses on a key element of Ricœur’s narrative hermeneutic
phenomenology and how that modality of narrative is used to construct a
particular kind of identity. I argue for a self-in-relation: the self as constituted
through relations to others, or intersubjectively, which is expressed in and as
narrative. Ricœur’s hermeneutic distills several of Chaucer’s key interests:
time, history, fictionality, and poetics; selfhood and alterity; the
significance of language and of fidelity to one’s word; and agency, passivity,
and suffering. By applying that heremeneutic, we can consider the extent to
which Chaucer’s poetry may use narrative to represent or resolve those
interests and their connection to identity.</p>
<p>Chapter 1 explores the identity
construction of three Chaucerian women by identifying patterns of yielding
discursive authority that either subvert or redirect narrative structures of
masculine authority. I argue that women like Criseyde have more control over
their own lives and a more positive subject-position than previously
recognized. In Chapter 2, I argue that racialized narratives shared by the
Canterbury pilgrims structure their community by defining what kind of identity
is acceptable—in this case, a white Christian identity, shared by all the
pilgrims, that reproduces a Western hegemonic whiteness. In chapter 3, I argue
that in Chaucer’s talking-animal poetry, the recognition and response that
narrative facilitates results in an ethic of care that is invested in
principles of solicitude and friendship. In Chapter<b> </b>4, I argue that Chaucer’s dream visions represent narratives of
poetic subjectivity that are embedded in issues of memory and sociality that
take shape in and as space. Finally, in conclusion I tie these arguments back
to a question asked of the fictional representation of Chaucer himself: Who are
you? This question animates much of Chaucer’s poetry and I have endeavored to
show how Chaucer answers that question with and in narrative. </p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:purdue.edu/oai:figshare.com:article/15074532 |
| Date | 29 July 2021 |
| Creators | Amanda Elise Leary (11203698) |
| Source Sets | Purdue University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis |
| Rights | CC BY 4.0 |
| Relation | https://figshare.com/articles/thesis/Relational_Chaucer_Intersubjective_Identity_and_Ricoeurian_Narrative_Hermeneutics/15074532 |
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