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COPYRIGHT 1993 University of Illinois Press
Chaucer's Dante gives an intense, subtly articulated, and highly original reading of two great poems and of the relationship between them. it reflects the years of dedication that have gone into its and their writing. It recognizes at the outset the opinions it will confront and moves confidently through the two poems to emphasize its own selection of episodes. It shows awareness of literary, philosophical, and social backgrounds and makes informed and intelligent use of modern critical theory. In short it demands and earns our attention, though it will hardly win total assent from any of its readers.
After taking account of the great and obvious differences in inspiration, composition, completeness, and form of the two poems, Neuse states his thesis on page 2, "that the poem Chaucer left unfinished at his death plays on fundamentally the same emotional, poetic, and intellectual registers as its Italian predecessor." In both poems the quest is for "the human image" as in God's likeness and at the same time for "the protagonist's self-discovery" (p. 6). This allegorical quest is more diffuse in the Canterbury Tales, but the pilgrims individually and collectively contribute to the effort to define and redefine the human image and likeness. In both poems recovery of the "body" as a necessary part of the likeness is essential in the quest.
Neuse takes up in the seven chapters following the introduction the questions of genre (Virgil; Thopas and Melibee), allegory (Geryon; Nun's Priest's Tale),...
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