Boccaccio, Chaucer, and stories for an uncertain world : agency in the Decameron and the Canterbury tales / Robert W. Hanning.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hanning, Robert W., author.

Series:

Oxford studies in medieval literature and culture.

Oxford studies in medieval literature and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Boccaccio, Giovanni, 1313-1375. Decamerone.

Boccaccio, Giovanni.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (368 pages).

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford, England : Oxford University Press, [2021]

Summary:

A comparative study of Boccaccio's 'Decameron' and Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales' that explores the differences and similarities between the worlds that are portrayed by each text, with a focus on the strategies and limits of personal agency, and the significance and social dynamics of story-telling.

Contents:

Cover

Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Stories for an Uncertain World: Agency in the Decameron and the Canterbury Tales

Copyright

Series Page

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Contents

Introduction. Having the World by the Tale: A new comparative reading of the Decameron and the Canterbury Tales

A note on the text of the Canterbury Tales

1: Mapping the uncertain world Texts and contexts

The historical lineage and cultural breeding grounds of pragmatic prudence

Aristotle, Cicero, and the centrality of (moral) Prudence

The cultural parturition of an amoral prudence: three possible stimuli

Governance

Commerce

Institutional religion

Narrative antecedents

Fabulation: the triple challenge

Why tell? The function of the fabula in the Decameron and the Canterbury Tales

The mimetic topography of an uncertain world

Mapping opinion

The inner vocabulary of nascent practical wisdom

The three stages of prudent agency: acting opportunistically, acting appropriately, acting decisively

Acting opportunistically: seizing the critical moment

Acting appropriately

Acting decisively

2: Fortuna, Fama, and the challenge to agency

Fortuna

Decameron

Canterbury Tales

Excursus-mythology and ecphrasis: the Knight's descriptions of the temples

Fama

3: Can you trust the sign?: Uncertainty of signification, comprehension, and perception

Introduction

Language

Cosyn/cozzen

The instability of signifying systems

Decameron 3.2-destabilizing signs: "king for a night," or, the royal rod strikes again

"The Reeve's Tale": what the cradle will rock (or, "who's been sleeping in MY bed?")

4: The uncertainty of Intention

Decameron 3.3: the confessor as go-between

Decameron 8.7: men and women behaving badly.

The Wife of Bath, apostle of uncertainty

Authorities

Sexual contradictions: parody/exposure/seeking to outrage

Timothy

Jankyn

Postlude: the Pardoner makes the scene

5: Power

Part 1: Phallic imprudence, or, Patriarchal power and the primal fear

Decameron 4.1: tragic agency

"The Merchant's Tale": the scene seen yet not seen

or, Doing the marriage in many voices

Part 2: the power of desire

Decameron 2.7: the power of desire, refracted through commerce and politics

"The Miller's Tale": Goddes pryvetee and the nye slye

"Goddes pryvetee": domesticating the cosmic and the prisoners of genre

When worlds collide: the clashing terrains of public and private desire in "The Miller's Tale"

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Secondary Sources

Index.

Notes:

This edition also issued in print: 2021.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-19-264762-8

0-19-191563-7

0-19-264761-X

OCLC:

1272995923