Shame and Guilt in Chaucer (The New Middle Ages)

Geoffrey Chaucer aimed his ethical critique and social satire at human failures to acknowledge guilt and their self-defensive use of shame. Shame and Guilt in Chaucer explores Chaucer's representation of these concepts in the context of modern affect theory. By showing how shame pervades Chaucer's texts but guilt is largely invisible, inaccessible, or resistant to full disclosure, Anne McTaggart challenges perceptions and reveals an ethics of affect to be at the heart of Chaucerian poetics.