Chaucer’s literary dreams : allegories of origin [thesis] PDF
Preview Chaucer’s literary dreams : allegories of origin [thesis]
INFORMATION TO USERS While the most advanced technology has been used to photograph and reproduce this manuscript, the quality of the reproduction is heavily dependent upon the quality of the material submitted. For example: • Manuscript pages may have indistinct print. In such cases, the best available copy has been filmed. « Manuscripts may not always be complete. In such cases, a note will indicate that it is not possible to obtain missing pages. • Copyrighted material may have been removed from the manuscript. In such cases, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, and charts) are photographed by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each oversize page is also filmed as one exposure and is available, for an additional charge, as a standard 35mm slide or as a 17”x 23” black and white photographic print. Most photographs reproduce acceptably on positive microfilm or microfiche but lack the clarity on xerographic copies made from the microfilm. For an additional charge, 35mm slides of 6”x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations that cannot be reproduced satisfactorily by xerography. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 8701690 Hewitt, Kathleen Maida CHAUCER’S LITERARY DREAMS: ALLEGORIES OF ORIGIN University of California, Davis Ph.D. 1986 University Microfilms International 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106 Copyright 1986 by Hewitt, Kathleen Maida All Rights Reserved Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Chaucer's Literary Dreams* Allegories of Origin By KATHLEEN MAIDA HEWITT A.B. (Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts) 1968 M.A, (University of California, Davis) 1980 DISSERTATION Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in English in the GRADUATE DIVISION of the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS Approved* G Committee in Charge 1986 1 - - Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Copyright by KATHLEEN MAIDA HEWITT 1986 - ii- Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. PREFACE General studies of Chaucer's early dream-poems— the Book of the Duchess, the House of Fame, and the Parliament of Fowls— have traditionally combined close textual analysis with careful reference to the poems' literary-historical background and source materials. One problem with this com bined approach is that sometimes basic critical assumptions about the process of poetic influence remain unquestioned, and as a result interpretations emerge that lack a thoroughly examined critical base. In this dissertation, by separating a purely textual, ahistorical reading of each poem from a reading of the poem as the product of its sources, I attempt to demonstrate that, because these separate an alyses corroborate each other's findings, my interpretations are both critically and historically sound. In the first, introductory chapter to the dissertation, I set forth the theoretical basis of my reading of these poems as allegories of poetic origin. I contend that Chaucer's early dream-poems may be read as iritegumental allegories in the tradition of the Chartrian poets of twelfth-century France. In support of this contention, I turn to several twentieth-century philosophical and literary-critical systems that provide instructive analogues to the Chartrian schema of cosmic correspondences between the registers of nature, man, -iii- Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and poetry. Of course, these contemporary theories discard or deconstruct the notion of a transcendental source and guarantor of meaning (that is, "God" for the Middle Ages) which is as central to the order of the Chartrian Platonic cosmos as it is to the more general medieval world view. As a result, the speculations of modern theory on questions of poetic origin lack the final closure that the Chartrian poets find in their allegorical cosmos. Modern theory alone there fore is not a sufficient analytical tool in dealing with Chaucer's early dream-poems. Only the questions these poems ask are "modern"; their answers are not. In each of these poems, the mirroring structure of the Chartrian poetical cosmos serves as a literary-philosophical background to an examination of the processes of poetic genesis. But at the same time, Chaucer's early poems rely upon the closure of the Chartrian cosmos, its ground in a Logos that exists outside the realms of time and change, to correct or gloss the metaphysically unsettling direction that the narrator's investigations take in each work— away from unity and toward multiplicity as the source of poetry. By using allied modern critical insights in analysing these poems, while still maintaining a sense of the poems’ literary and historical integrity, I aim in this dissertation both to illuminate critical issues in Chaucer's texts and to estab lish an accessible and secure theoretical foundation for my own interpretive work. -iv- Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. I would like to thank the members of my dissertation committee, Marijane Osborn, Winfried Schleiner, and Thomas A. Hanzo, for their valuable comments on and criticisms of my dissertation project. I would also like to thank Philip W. Damon of the University of California, Berkeley, for leading a seminar that encouraged me to think critically about allegory. I am grateful to W. Muller of Johannes Gutenberg-Universitat Mainz for generously reading the draft of a part of the manuscript. -v- Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page PREFACE CHAPTER I. Dreams of Interpretation ................... 1 II. Allegory of Loss: The Book of the Duchess . . 25 III. Unfinished Allegory: The House of Fame . . . 72 IV. Allegory and Difference: The Parliament of Fowls ............ 139 V. Allegories of O r igin ..................... 18^ BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................... 199 -Vi- Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
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