Chaucer's Narrators (Chaucer Studies)

The book begins with a brief prefatory discussion of its relation to structuralist and post-structuralist criticism. The first chapter, `Apocryphal Voices', surveys the basis of modern critical approaches to l>personal> and `irony' in Chaucer's poetry, and suggests that such approaches are better suited to unequivocally written contexts. A systematic hesitation between a wholly written and a wholly spoken context requires critical distinctions between types of l>persona/l>, and a number of distinctions in the range between l>persona/l> and voice. `Morality in its Context' examines the Pardoner and his tale and argues against a `dramatic' view of the tale itself, while the third chapter, 'Chaucer's Development of l>Persona/l>', is a study of possible sources for Chaucer's handling of the narratorial '1', looking at the English `l>disour/l>', the French `l>dits amoureux/l>', Italian and Latin sources of influence, and the l>Roman de la Rose/l>. The last two chapters apply the principles outlined so far to l>Troilus/l> and l>The Canterbury Tales/l>, with a particular examination of the literary history of the Squire's tale to show that modern interest in dramatic l>persona/l> has obscured many other important issues and leads to drastic misreading. This is a challenging and lucid work which questions many of the received attitudes of recent Chaucer criticism, and offers a reasoned and approachable alternative view.