Language and the Declining World in Chaucer, Dante, and Jean de Meun

John M. FYLER, Language and the Declining World in Chaucer, Dante, and Jean de Meun, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature), 2007, 380 p.
ISBN-13 9780521872157


RÉSUMÉ

Medieval commentaries on the origin and history of language used biblical history, from Creation to the Tower of Babel, as their starting/point, and described the progressive impairment of an originally perfect language. Biblical and classical sources raised questions for both medieval poets and commentators about the nature of language, its participation in the Fall, and its possible redemption. John M. Fyler focuses on how three major poets – Chaucer, Dante, and Jean de Meun – participated in these debates about language. He offers new analyses of how the history of language is described and debated in the Divine Comedy, the Canterbury Tales and the Roman de la Rose. While Dante follows the Augustinian idea of the fall and subsequent redemption of language, Jean de Meun and Chaucer are skeptical about the possibilities for linguistic redemption and resign themselves, at least half/comically, to the linguistic implications of the Fall and the declining world.


TABLE DES MATIÈRES

Acknowledgments page
List of abbreviations
The Biblical history of language
Love and language in Jean de Meun
Dante and Chaucer’s Dante
The prison-house of language
Notes
Primary sources
Bibliography
Index


À PROPOS DE L'AUTEUR

John M. Fyler is Professor of English at Tufts University, Massachusetts.