Chaucer and Crusader Ethics: Youth, Love, and the Material World.
- Author/Editor
- Elias, Marcel.
- Title
- Chaucer and Crusader Ethics: Youth, Love, and the Material World.
- Published
- Elias, Marcel. "Chaucer and Crusader Ethics: Youth, Love, and the Material World." The Review of English Studies, New Series 70, no. 296 (2019): 618-39.
- Review
- Elias argues that "the Squire's portrait in the "Canterbury Tales" is indebted to fourteenth-century crusade discourse, and that the ideological differences between the Knight and the Squire are well understood in relation to contemporary debates on the ethics of crusaders." (618) For Elias, the Knight and Squire reflect a series of rhetorical dichotomies associated with Crusader ethics: experienced wisdom vs. rashness of youth; material verses spiritual desires; and simple vs. opulent dress. Chaucer, as Elias states, associates the Squire with the Despenser Crusade in order to depict "a crusader, who embodies moral and behavioural weaknesses" (639). At various points in the essay, Elias compares Chaucer's representation of Crusader ethics (and Chaucer's critique of crusading generally) with Gower's discussions of crusades and crusading in his "Mirour de l'Omme" and "Confessio Amantis." Elias argues that Gower's references foreground (as do Chaucer's) the incompatibility of love with desire for worldly fame (which drives much of crusader ethics). [BWG. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 41.1]
- Date
- 2019
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis
Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis)
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations