Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Stories for an Uncertain World: Agency in the Decameron and the Canterbury Tales
Robert W. Hanning, "Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Stories for an Uncertain World: Agency in the Decameron and the Canterbury Tales "
English | ISBN: 0192894757 | 2022 | 384 pages | PDF | 2 MB
English | ISBN: 0192894757 | 2022 | 384 pages | PDF | 2 MB
Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Stories for an Uncertain World understands the Decameron and the Canterbury Tales to communicate a radical uncertainty haunting most human endeavors, one that challenges effective knowledge of the future, the past, or the distant present; accurate perception of both
complex, equivocal signifying systems, including language, and the intentions hidden rather than revealed by the words and deeds of others; and successful strategy in dealing with the chronic excesses and arbitrariness of power. This comparative study of Decameron novelle and Canterbury pilgrim
tales yields the insight that the key to coping with these challenges is pragmatic prudence: rational calculation issuing in an opportunistic, often amoral choice of ingenious deeds and/or eloquent words appropriate (though without guarantee) to mastering a specific crisis, and achieving the goal of
agency in the here and now, not salvation in the Hereafter. An initial chapter explores the Aristotelian antecedents, contemporaneous cultural influences, and narrative techniques that intersect to shape the radically uncertain world of the
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