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Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0959-1452
AccessType
Open Access Dissertation
Document Type
dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Degree Program
English
Year Degree Awarded
2022
Month Degree Awarded
February
First Advisor
Jenny Adams
Second Advisor
Ingrid Nelson
Third Advisor
Jessica Barr
Fourth Advisor
Jane Degenhardt
Subject Categories
Literature in English, British Isles | Medieval Studies
Abstract
After the rediscovery of Aristotle’s works on natural science in the thirteenth century, Geoffrey Chaucer’s late fourteenth-century world saw a new interest in materialism with an awareness that materiality also implies loss. “Literary Negation and Materialism in Chaucer” explores the ways particular moments of negation—the imagined absence of a person, thing, or condition—operate in Chaucer’s work and the ways Chaucer deploys such moments as part of a larger pattern of negation that broke with the poetics that preceded him. My methodology grows out of discussions about form, philosophy, science and technology, economics, translation, and materialism. I integrate this interdisciplinary framework with a cross-genre approach to Chaucer’s long narrative poetry, prose manuals, framed tales, dream visions, lyrics, and philosophical dialogues. In chapters examining the power of literary language to generate material repercussions even when it seems to negate them, I argue that Chaucer’s techniques of negation serve to withdraw certain material referents in order to explore the potential of imaginative literature to fill in what is missing and locate a pathway for abundance and recuperation. “Literary Negation and Materialism in Chaucer” foregrounds an overlooked current in Chaucer’s work which can serve as a starting point for a “negative turn” to reshape a field confronting issues of canonicity and equity.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/26971988
Recommended Citation
Brooks, Michelle, "LITERARY NEGATION AND MATERIALISM IN CHAUCER" (2022). Doctoral Dissertations. 2436.
https://doi.org/10.7275/26971988
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/2436