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Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 1,3, University of Cologne (Englisches Seminar), course: Hauptseminar “English Literature from Chaucer to Shakespeare”, language: English, abstract: This paper will scrutinize the “Miller’s Tale” and the “Reeve’s Tale” with regard to their erotic contents and the instances of obscene speech. The main emphasis will be put on a discussion on the genre of the tales as well as the question, whether instances of eroticism are really the light-hearted expression of joyful lust, or rather skillful narrative means serving both the authentic representation of the characters and the emphasizing of the tales’ overall morals. There is hardly any period in history that has preoccupied people of later eras as much as the Middle Ages. They have been a recurring popular subject in literature over the last two hundred years. The film industry could not go without them. One reason for this fascination might be the fact that the Middle Ages are both a part of our own history, still visible in magnificent church buildings, and an era that lies half a millennium away from us. This distance and a rather limited knowledge about the ‘real’ circumstances contribute to a hazy image leaving plenty of space for interpretation and imagination. A popular view on the Middle Ages from our perspective is that of jaunty folk, who enjoyed their lives being free of the restraints of our modern society. It is therefore not surprising that the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini chose the “Canterbury Tales” for one of the films in his Trilogy of Life the other two being Bocaccio’s “The Decameron and Arabian Nights”. Pasolini made his films in a time which today is referred to as the ‘Sexual Revolution’. Perhaps it was the undisguised depiction of sexuality in some of the “Canterbury Tales” which had inspired him to adapt them for the screen. One of the “Canterbury Tales” we find in Pasolini’s film is the “Miller’s Tale”. It is the second story being told, after the “Knight’s Tale”, and it forms a unit, or a diptych, together with the Reeve’s Tale, which follows. One does not have to approve of Pasolini’s intentions in order to acknowledge the erotic elements in both of these tales. Having a closer look at the instances of eroticism in the tales leads to the question of the author’s motivation to employ them. Are the “Miller’s” and the “Reeve’s Tale” erotic stories written with the intention to arouse sexual feelings, or were they rather meant to challenge and provoke the contemporary authorities? Was it common literary practice in Chaucer’s time to use erotic or obscene speech, or did he break new ground in literature?
Using extant manuscripts as his starting point, Edward Condren argues that the overall design of the Canterbury Tales has a structural parallel with Dante's Commedia. He demonstrates how individual tales support this design and how the design itself confers rich meaning, in some instances investing with new complexity tales that otherwise have been little appreciated.
Fisher's work is a vivid, lively, and readable translation of the most famous work of England's premier medieval poet. Preserving Chaucer's rhyme and meter and faithfully articulating his poetic voice, Fisher makes Chaucer's tales accessible to a contemporary ear.
The author argues that the structure of sexual relationships took its cue from the family and feudalism - both bastions of masculinity - as he presents his interpretation of women, what they represented and what they were in the Middle Ages
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1992.
Everyone knows of the Canterbury Tales, acknowledged as one of the leading texts of the English Canon. Consensus about them ends there. Amongst the most written about works of English literature, they still defy categorisation. Was Chaucer a poet of profound religious piety or a sceptic who questioned all religious and moral certainties? Do his pilgrims reflect the actual society of his day, or were they a product of an already well-established literary tradition and convention? Was he a defender of women or a misogynist, who reproduced the antifeminism characteristic of his time? Did his writings present a challenge to the dominant social outlook of late Medieval England or reinforce the status quo? This stimulating new book surveys and assesses these competing critical approaches to Chaucer's work, emphasising the need to see Chaucer in historical context; the context of the social and political concerns of his own day. Writing as a historian, Rigby brings refreshing new insights to this contested old chestnut and Chaucer, and his Tales, are revealed to us as Chaucer's contemporaries would have seen them.
Provides teaching strategies, background, and suggested resources; reproducible student pages to use before, during, and after reading--Cover.
Richard Neuse here explores the relationship between two great medieval epics, Dante's Divine Comedy and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. He argues that Dante's attraction for Chaucer lay not so much in the spiritual dimension of the Divine Comedy as in the human. Borrowing Bertolt Brecht's phrase "epic theater," Neuse underscores the interest of both poets in presenting, as on a stage, flesh and blood characters in which readers would recognize the authors as well as themselves. As spiritual autobiography, both poems challenge the traditional medieval mode of allegory, with its tendency to separate body and soul, matter and spirit. Thus Neuse demonstrates that Chaucer and Dante embody a humanism not generally attributed to the fourteenth century. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1991.