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

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.

List of contents

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


• 1: Mapping the uncertain world: Texts and contexts


• 2: Fortuna, Fama, and the challenge to agency


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


• 4: The uncertainty of Intention


• 5: Power


• Bibliography

About the author

Robert W. Hanning is Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University. He taught as a Visiting Professor at Yale, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, and New York University. He was Kirk Professor of Medieval Literature at Bread Loaf School of English, Middlebury College and directed the Bread Loaf program at Lincoln College, Oxford on three occasions.

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.

Additional text

Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Stories for an Uncertain World provides an engaging, witty, and useful contribution to the field by illustrating the shared concern of deliberative agency in these most celebrated tale collections. Hanning's framework also paves the way for further scholarship on uncertainty and deliberation in other of Boccaccio's and Chaucer's works, such as the Filostrato and Troilus.

Product details

• Authors: Robert W. Hanning, Robert W. (Professor Emeritus of English Hanning, Robert W. (Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature Hanning, Hanning Robert W.
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.10.2021
• EAN: 9780192894755
• ISBN: 978-0-19-289475-5
• No. of pages: 374
• Series: Oxford Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > Classical linguistics / literary studies; LITERARY CRITICISM / Drama, LITERARY CRITICISM / Ancient & Classical, Literary studies: classical, early & medieval, Literary studies: plays & playwrights, Literary studies: ancient, classical and medieval, Literary studies: plays and playwrights