Understanding Chaucer's Intellectual and Interpretative World: Nominalist Fiction (Studies in British Literature) - Hardcover

Foster, Edward E.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0773479724 ISBN 13: 9780773479722

Publisher: Edwin Mellen Pr, 1999

Synopsis

The problem of “undecideability” has long been a major preoccupation of Chaucer criticism. This study, while noting but not trying to ‘account for’ each and every prior approach, proposes the positive alternative that in making his fictions, Chaucer gibes a shape to the Ockhamite nominalist approach to human understanding of the world. By interpreting Chaucer’s fictions, we share his imaginative attempt to understand the splendors and imponderables of God’s fictions. “Foster is conversant with medieval theology and philosophy, and this gives authority to his exposition of his largely new theory. He is also thoroughly familiar both with the Chaucerian corpus and with its voluminous secondary literature. He writes with an engaging variation of level and tone, philosophically informed or critically complex when necessary, with moments of down to earth judgment and the occasional joke which will commend the book to student and Chaucer scholar alike. It is a remarkable conspectus, drawing on mature scholarship and long and hard critical thinking, and its thesis has much to offer even the most experienced reader of Chaucer.” – Michael Alexander

Edition details

• Publisher: Edwin Mellen Pr
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0773479724
• ISBN 13: 9780773479722
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 234