Chaucer and the politics of discourse /

In this insightful and original study, Grudin (Lewis and Clark College) explores the significance of speech in Chaucer's works. She looks at the spoken word and the relationships between speakers and audiences. Her analyses of specific texts offer a fresh perspective of a Chaucer who, alone of the early humanists, recognizes the limitations of discourse. Seven chapters provide close readings of significant texts: the dynamics of reciprocity in the early dream-visions; misperceptions in connection with communicative transactions in Troilus and Criseyde; and, from the Canterbury Tales, the political considerations of dialogue and authority in the Knight's Tale, the social implications of discursive freedom in the Wife of Bath's Prologue, distinctions between uses and misuses of speech in the Squire's Tale and the Franklin's Tale, and the political implications of speech and truth in the Manciple's Tale. A concluding chapter focuses on the dynamics of discourse in relation to social conventions and poetic closure. This engaging volume has much to offer scholars, teachers, and upper-division undergraduate students of medieval English literature and culture. C. S. Cox; University of Pittsburgh