218 pages

English

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Chaucerian Spaces , livre ebook

State University of New York Press - William F. Woods

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218 pages

English

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Chaucerian Spaces explores the affect and the significance of space and place in the first six tales in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Relatively little has been written about space in the Canterbury Tales, yet the rewards for attending to this aspect of Chaucer's aesthetic are considerable. Space indicates the potential for characteristic action, development, and a more profound expression of being. In these tales, characters inhabit a landscape and places within it that express their inner life. Emelye in her garden, Palamon and Arcite in the grove—all occupy spaces or places that manifest social destiny and individual intention. Space and subjectivity change as territories give way to households, and the horizons of consciousness shrink to the core of human intent. Most striking is the transformation of women in place. Emelye, Alysoun, even Custance and the Wife of Bath, dwell in places that express their social and economic potential. They are in place, but place is also in them: they merge in metaphor with the places that express them, bringing the reader closer to the sensible, reflective experience of the medieval subject.

Preface
Introduction

1. Dwelling Places of Chivalry and Nature

2. Alysoun the Housewife

3. The Solace of Open Spaces

4. Symkyn’s Place

5. Changing Places

6. The Riches of Exilic Space

7. The Domestic Market

8. The Exile and Her Kingdom

9. Chaucer’s Spatial Poetics

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

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Stephen Ireland

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Informations

Publié par	State University of New York Press
Date de parution	30 juin 2008
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780791478196
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1648€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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C H A U C E R I A N S P A C E S

SUNY series in Medieval Studies Paul E. Szarmach, editor

C H A U C E R I A N S P A C E S

Spatial Poetics in Chaucer’s Opening Tales

William F. Woods

State University of New York Press

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu

Production by Diane Ganeles Marketing by Anne M. Valentine

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Woods, William F. Chaucerian spaces : spatial poetics in Chaucer's opening tales / William F. Woods. p. cm. — (SUNY series in medieval studies) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 978-0-7914-7487-7 (hardcover: alk. paper) 1. Chaucer, Geoffrey, d. 1400—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Poetry, Medieval—History and criticism. 3. Poetics—History—To 1500. I. Title.

PR1924.W66 2008 821'.1—dc22

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

2007033898

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Preface

Introduction

Contents

Dwelling Places of Chivalry and Nature

Alysoun the Housewife

The Solace of Open Spaces

Symkyn’s Place

Changing Places

The Riches of Exilic Space

The Domestic Market

The Exile and Her Kingdom

Chaucer’s Spatial Poetics

Notes

Bibliography

Index

vii

105

117

133

149

185

197

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Preface

“On whatever horizon we examine it,” writes Gaston Bachelard, “the house 1 image would appear to have become the topography of our intimate being.” He devotes his leading chapter to attics, cellars, garrets, towers, and huts, pro-viding at length a “poetics of the house,” which is at once the various ways we understand “our corner of the world,” and the way its memories, or images 2 shadow forth the deepest parts of ourselves. As Bachelard puts it, “the house 3 images move in both directions: they are in us as much as we are in them.” The house is not the only image he examines, for traces of the intimate self lie also in drawers, chests and wardrobes, and in nests and shells and corners, and even in “the dialectics of outside and inside,” and “the phenomenology of roundness.” Bachelard is concerned specifically with poetic images, which have “a 4 sonority of being” that resonates with our own being and our own creative-ness. Here he speaks directly to literary critics, who approach poetry with the same question: “What are the sources of its power?” In this book, I will have much to say about Chaucer’s images of the house, but also of gardens, towers, fields, fens, shops, and amphitheaters—the many kinds of significant space we find in his opening tales. In its quiet way, that space creates the ground rules, the spatial logic of what we soon come to know as the world of theCanter-bury Tales. But while Bachelard, like Jung, uses spatial images to study “the 5 depths of the human soul,” my purpose is to study them in the context of nar-rative, where extended space implies certain kinds of possibility, and the emplacement of characters (“where they are”) remains critical to our sense of who they are and what they intend. In narrative as in life, a character’s pres-ence gathers the surroundings, giving them a center and an orientation. Thus, we can say that the person creates the place. But equally, by dwelling in place—through the experience of being in place and becoming part of that place—a character is revealed to us in surprisingly intimate ways. Inquiring into the relations of person and place, I have also found most useful the fine books by the phenomenologist Edward S. Casey (Getting Back into PlaceandThe Fate of Place), yet beyond its fundamental orientation, this book is not a phenomenological approach to Chaucer. It is intended as a read-ing of Fragments I–III and theShipman’s Talethat addresses what I would call the spatial affect of Chaucer’s tales: the emotional power and coded meaning

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