The Disenchanted Self: Representing the Subject in the Canterbury Tales / Edition 1

by H. Marshall Leicester Jr.

Overview

The question of the "dramatic principle" in the Canterbury Tales, of whether and how the individual tales relate to the pilgrims who are supposed to tell them, has long been a central issue in the interpretation of Chaucer's work. Drawing on ideas from deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and social theory, Leicester proposes that Chaucer can lead us beyond the impasses of contemporary literary theory and suggests new approaches to questions of agency, representation, and the gendered imagination.

Leicester reads the Canterbury Tales as radically voiced and redefines concepts like "self" and "character" in the light of current discussions of language and subjectivity. He argues for Chaucer's disenchanted practical understanding of the constructed character of the self, gender, and society, building his case through close readings of the Pardoner's, Wife of Bath's, and Knight's tales. His study is among the first major treatments of Chaucer's poetry utilizing the techniques of contemporary literary theory and provides new models for reading the poems while revising many older views of them and of Chaucer's relation to his age.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520068339
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	06/22/1990
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	468
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

H. Marshall Leicester, Jr. is Professor of English Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of several articles on Chaucer and medieval literature.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
	Introduction	I
Part 1	Chaucer's Subject
1.	The Pardoner as Disenchanted Consciousness and Despairing Self	35
2.	Self-Presentation and Disenchantment in the Wife of Bath's Prologue: A Prospective View	65
3.	Retrospective Revision and the Emergence of the Subject in the Wife of Bath's Prologue	82
4.	Janekyn's Book: The Subject as Text	114
5.	Subjectivity and Disenchantment: The Wife of Bath's Tale as Institutional Critique	140
Part 2	The Subject Engendered
6.	The Pardoner as Subject: Deconstruction and Practical Consciousness	161
7.	From Deconstruction to Psychoanalysis and Beyond: Disenchantment and the "Masculine" Imagination	178
8.	The "Feminine" Imagination and Jouissance	195
Part 3	The Institution of the Subject: A Reading of the Knight's Tale
9.	The Knight's Critique of Genre I: Ambivalence and Generic Style	221
10.	The Knight's Critique of Genre II: From Representation to Revision	243
11.	Regarding Knighthood: A Practical Critique of the "Masculine" Gaze	267
12.	The Unhousing of the Gods: Character, Habitus, and Necessity in Part III	295
13.	Choosing Manhood: The "Masculine" Imagination and the Institution of the Subject	322
14.	Doing Knighthood: Heroic Disenchantment and the Subject of Chivalry	352
	Conclusion: The Disenchanted Self	383
	Works Cited	419
	Index	433