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Article: Chaucer and the Universe of Learning.
- Article from:
- Medium Aevum
- Article date:
- September 22, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 Society for the Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literature. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Ann W. Astell, (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1996). xvi + 254 pp. ISBN 0-8014-3269-3. 27-50 [pounds sterling].
Ann Astell makes three arguments in this book on the basis that Chaucer is a philosophical poet. She makes a solid case for the significance of the layout of the Ellesmere MS in terms of clerical and astrological learning, suggests that we have undervalued the status of clerks as a fourth estate in Chaucer's vision of society, and argues that The Canterbury Tales represents both a social summa (in the General Prologue) and a philosophical one (in the groupings of tales). She argues carefully, if controversially, that Chaucer's audience ...