Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

1973

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Abstract

An examination of the dream-vision form and the Hiddle English lyric clarifies the role relationship in Chaucer's The Book of the Duchess, a relationship not fully clarified by past scholarship. In the dream vision a conventional pattern establishes the relationship between the narrator and his superior guide and, in the English lyric form, the "chanson d'aventure," the narrator encounters a sorrowing figure who provides enlightenment through the explanation of his sorrow. Chaucer employs the dream vision's conventional pattern and, in the dream portion of the poem, he makes use of the "chanson d'aventure" form with the added complexities of his own material. His Narrator has forgotten his nature as man. The sorrowing Knight reminds him of the need to feel this emotion, both over the loss of the Duchess and because of man's own fallen state. The Knight, then, becomes a guide who provides enlightenment for the erring Narrator.

Extent

78 p.

Comments

FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1973.|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Identifier

FADT13601

Format

pdf

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