Narrative, Authority and Power: The Medieval Exemplum and the Chaucerian Tradition

by Larry Scanlon

• ISBN13: 9780521044257
• ISBN10: 0521044251
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-11-05
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Little attention has been paid to the political and ideological significance of the exemplum, a brief narrative form used to illustrate a moral. Through a study of four major works in the Chaucerian tradition (The Canterbury Tales, John Gower's Confessio Amantis, Thomas Hoccleve's Regement of Princes, and Lydgate's Fall of Princes), Scanlon redefines the exemplum as a 'narrative enactment of cultural authority'. He traces its development through the two strands of the medieval Latin tradition which the Chaucerians appropriate: the sermon exemplum, and the public exemplum of the Mirrors of Princes. In so doing, he reveals how Chaucer and his successors used these two forms of exemplum to explore the differences between clerical authority and lay power, and to establish the moral and cultural authority of their emergent vernacular tradition.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Exemplarity and Authority in the Middle Ages

Chaucer's Parson

Redefining the exemplum: narrative, ideology and subjectivity

Auctoritas and potestas: a model of analysis for medieval culture

The Latin Tradition

The sermon exemplum

The public exemplum

The Chaucerian Tradition

Exemplarity and the Chaucerian tradition

Canterbury Tales (I): from preacher to prince

Canterbury Tales (II): from preaching to poetry

Bad examples: Gower's Confessio Amantis

The Chaucerian tradition in the fifteenth century

Bibliography

Index

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