CHAUCER ON LOVE, KNOWLEDGE, AND SIGHT.(Review)

CHAUCER ON LOVE, KNOWLEDGE, AND SIGHT. By Norman Klassen. (Chaucer Studies, 21.) Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1995 (1997). Pp. xi + e25. $53.

Although this study of some of Chaucer's intellectual and literary backgrounds calls itself "interdisciplinary," it is not so strictly speaking, but combines a survey of relevant intellectual history (beginning with Augustine) with comparative study of similar themes in works (beginning with Boethius) with which Chaucer was either known to be or can reasonably be presumed to have been familiar. This is a sort of literary history which has been done before but is done deftly here on a complex subject, fin' amor that has too often been overly simplified and dogmatized.

Klassen's governing image for his analysis is the notion of "parasitism" or rather parasitisme, for he refers a number of times to the French concept, especially as cryptically deconstructed in Michel Serres's Le Parasite. Klassen takes quite a while to explain to his readers clearly why this term, rather than some other more common one (such as "symbiotic"), was selected to focus his …