Narrative, authority, and power : the medieval exemplum and the Chaucerian tradition

Resource Information

The work Narrative, authority, and power : the medieval exemplum and the Chaucerian tradition represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in European University Institute Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Narrative, authority, and power : the medieval exemplum and the Chaucerian tradition

Title remainder

the medieval exemplum and the Chaucerian tradition

Statement of responsibility

Larry Scanlon

Title variation

Narrative, Authority & Power

Creator

• Scanlon, Larry

Subject

• Chaucer, Geoffrey, -1400 -- Knowledge | Literature
• Didactic literature, Latin (Medieval and modern) -- History and criticism
• English poetry -- Middle English, 1100-1500 -- History and criticism
• Exempla in literature
• Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.) -- History -- To 1500
• Narration (Rhetoric) -- History -- To 1500
• Power (Social sciences) in literature
• Rhetoric, Medieval
• Authority in literature

Language

eng

Summary

Little attention has been paid to the political and ideological significance of the exemplum, a brief narrative form used to illustrate a moral. Through a study of four major works in the Chaucerian tradition (The Canterbury Tales, John Gower's Confessio Amantis, Thomas Hoccleve's Regement of Princes, and Lydgate's Fall of Princes), Scanlon redefines the exemplum as a 'narrative enactment of cultural authority'. He traces its development through the two strands of the medieval Latin tradition which the Chaucerians appropriate: the sermon exemplum, and the public exemplum of the Mirrors of Princes. In so doing, he reveals how Chaucer and his successors used these two forms of exemplum to explore the differences between clerical authority and lay power, and to establish the moral and cultural authority of their emergent vernacular tradition. --

Member of

• Cambridge studies in medieval literature, 20

Assigning source

Provided by publisher

Cataloging source

UkCbUP

Index

index present

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

dictionaries

Series statement

• Cambridge studies in medieval literature
• Cambridge Social Sciences eBooks

Series volume

20