Chaucerian Aesthetics

Chaucerian Aesthetics examines The Canterbury Tale and Troilus and Criseyde from both medieval and post-Kantian vantage points. These sometimes congruent, sometimes divergent perspectives illuminate both the immediate pleasure of encountering beauty and its haunting promise of intelligibility. Although aesthetic reflection has sometimes seemed out of sync with modern approaches to mind and language, Knapp defends its value in general and demonstrates its importance for the analysis of Chaucer’s narrative art. Focusing on language games, persons, women, humor, and community, this book ponders what makes art beautiful.

Chaucerian Aesthetics examines The Canterbury Tale and Troilus and Criseyde from both medieval and post-Kantian vantage points. These sometimes congruent, sometimes divergent perspectives illuminate both the immediate pleasure of encountering beauty and its haunting promise of intelligibility. Although aesthetic reflection has sometimes seemed out of sync with modern approaches to mind and language, Knapp defends its value in general and demonstrates its importance for the analysis of Chaucer’s narrative art. Focusing on language games, persons, women, humor, and community, this book ponders what makes art beautiful.

Peggy A. Knapp is a Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University. She founded and edited the annual book series Assays: Critical Approaches to Medieval and Renaissance Texts. She is the author of The Style of John Wyclif’s English Sermons, Chaucer and the Social Contest, Time-Bound Words, and many articles on medieval and early modern authors, as well as contemporary writers, critics, and filmmakers.