Chaucer and Language

by Myles, Robert; Williams, David; WURTELE, DOUGLAS J.

• ISBN13: 9780773521827
• ISBN10: 0773521828
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-01-01
• Publisher: McGill Queens Univ

Summary

He brings to the creative use of signification a sophisticated philosophical questioning of the very nature of language, of how we know and how we signify. Chaucer and Language argues that Chaucer=s work points to answers to these questions, emphasizing that in various ways Chaucer made language itself the subject of his writing. ;The polyvalent nature of signs and the ambiguity this makes possible are discussed as one aspect of Chaucer's use of language as subject, as is irony. Chaucer's extension of the concept of language to include relics and the Eucharist, his exploitation of equivocation and the lie, and the semiotic dimensions of his poetic themes are also treated. These issues derive directly from the long tradition of mediaeval sign theory and anticipate the major issues of the modern theory of signs that is semantics.

Table of Contents

Preface: A Life in Progress	vii
M.I. Cameron
Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	xiii
David Williams
Chaucer and Character: The Heresies of Douglas Wurtele	3	(8)
Robert Myles
``Withouten oother compaignye in youthe'': Verbal and Moral Ambiguity in the General Prologue Portrait of the Wife of Bath	11	(22)
Beverly Kennedy
The Wife of Bath and ``Speche Daungerous''	33	(11)
Chauncey Wood
The Franklin, Epicurus, and the Play of Values	44	(17)
E.C. Ronquist
Mapping a History of Sexuality in Melibee	61	(10)
Glenn Burger
Chaucer after the Linguistic Turn: Memory, History, and Fiction in the Link to Melibee	71	(12)
Christine Jones
Chaucer's Clerk, on the Level?	83	(24)
Victor Yelverton Haines
Confusing Signs: The Semiotic Point of View in the Clerk's Tale	107	(19)
Robert Myles
Sense, Reference, and Wisdom in the Merchant's Tale	126	(17)
Patrick J. Gallacher
``Lo how I vanysshe'': The Pardoner's War against Signs	143	(32)
David Williams
Notes	175	(48)
Appendix: Published Writings of Douglas Wurtele	223	(2)
Works Cited	225	(22)
Index	247