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Chaucer and the Rhetorical Limits of Exemplary Literature

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.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc279341
Date05 1900
CreatorsYoumans, Karen DeMent
ContributorsLandman, James, Richardson, Peter, 1959-, Raign, Kathryn Rosser
PublisherUniversity of North Texas
Source SetsUniversity of North Texas
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis or Dissertation
Formatv, 151 leaves, Text
RightsPublic, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved., Youmans, Karen DeMent

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