Chaucer's Corrective Form: The Tale of Melibee and the Poetics of Emendation
Chad G. Crosson
This essay argues that the form Geoffrey Chaucer devises for Canterbury Tales rests on a recursive and iterative corrective process based grammatical emendation was tied, by long-standing analogy, to moral reform. The Tale of Melibee makes this most explicit suggests both ambitions dangers artistic project. On one hand, it is in logic can be seen clearly, as Prudence correction principle her prose; tale portrays slow, incremental repetition only gradually brings about change. In way, displays other its are clear enough, because notoriously unsatisfactory. Chaucer, however, deliberately stages those contrasts with solution. While illustrates literary pitfalls, becomes means innovation: certainty error corruption discourse provide an method, evades clarity but provides occasion ongoing intellectual, artistic, exercise. account Chaucer's poetics debates over bearing his poetry unavoidable design, also irresolvable design.
Studies in Philology