Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 The social and literary scene in England
- 2 Chaucer’s French inheritance
- 3 Chaucer’s Italian inheritance
- 4 Old books brought to life in dreams
- 5 Telling the story in Troilus and Criseyde
- 6 Chance and destiny in Troilus and Criseyde and the Knight’s Tale
- 7 The Legend of Good Women
- 8 The Canterbury Tales
- 9 The Canterbury Tales I
- 10 The Canterbury Tales II
- 11 The Canterbury Tales III
- 12 The Canterbury Tales IV
- 13 Literary structures in Chaucer
- 14 Chaucer’s style
- 15 Chaucer’s presence and absence, 1400-1550
- 16 New approaches to Chaucer
- 17 Further reading
- Index
- Series List
13 - Literary structures in Chaucer
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
- Frontmatter
- 1 The social and literary scene in England
- 2 Chaucer’s French inheritance
- 3 Chaucer’s Italian inheritance
- 4 Old books brought to life in dreams
- 5 Telling the story in Troilus and Criseyde
- 6 Chance and destiny in Troilus and Criseyde and the Knight’s Tale
- 7 The Legend of Good Women
- 8 The Canterbury Tales
- 9 The Canterbury Tales I
- 10 The Canterbury Tales II
- 11 The Canterbury Tales III
- 12 The Canterbury Tales IV
- 13 Literary structures in Chaucer
- 14 Chaucer’s style
- 15 Chaucer’s presence and absence, 1400-1550
- 16 New approaches to Chaucer
- 17 Further reading
- Index
- Series List
Summary
'Th'ende is every tales strengthe . . .' as Pandarus tells Criseyde, and the Canterbury Tales as a whole and in many of its parts - as well as some of Chaucer's other works - suggest both the significance and also the challenge and strain that Chaucer found in inventing an appropriate close to the structures that he had created in his poems. This essay outlines Chaucer's characteristic uses of such literary structures, and the particular place of an ending as the 'strengthe' in the distinctive forms of artistic wholeness that Chaucer's poetic structures represent. It is not only in Chaucer's many poems that are not brought to a close - the House of Fame, the Anelida, the Legend of Good Women, the Cook's Tale, the Squire's Tale - but also in those works where Chaucer does provide a conclusion, such as the ending of the Troilus or the ending of the whole Canterbury Tales with the Parson's Tale, that the poet's sense of the ending as a difficult and special part of the 'strengthe' of a literary structure is felt.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer , pp. 214 - 232Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004
- 1
- Cited by