Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Ethics and Exemplary Narrative in Chaucer and Gower

Ethics and Exemplary Narrative in Chaucer and Gower

Mitchell, J. Allan

Hardcover

Series: Chaucer Studies, Book 33

Literary CriticismFiction AnthologiesGeneral Poetry

ISBN10: 1843840197
ISBN13: 9781843840190
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Inc
Published: Oct 14 2004
Pages: 166
Weight: 0.92
Height: 0.76 Width: 6.46 Depth: 9.54
Language: English
A lively defence of the ethics of exemplary narrative, and a detailed account of its forms and functioning in the works of Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower.

Why do medieval writers routinely make use of exemplary rhetoric? How does it work, and what are its ethical and poetical values? And if Chaucer and Gower must be seen as vigorously subverting it, then why do they persist in using it? Borrowing from recent developments in ethical criticism and theory, this book addresses such questions by reconstructing a late medieval rationale for the ethics of exemplary narrative. The author argues that Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Gower's Confessio Amantis attest to the vitality of a narrative - rather than strictly normative - ethics that has roots in premodern traditions of practical reason and rhetoric. Chaucer and Gower are shown to be inheritors and respecters of an early and unexpected form of ethical pragmatism - which has profound implications for the orthodox history of ethics in the West.

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