チョーサーの諺と笑い : ファブリオを中心に

概要

論文の詳細を見る
Geoffrey Chaucer is the medieval English poet who made the most extensive use of proverbs in his works. It has been said that scholars have not paid sufficient attention to Chaucer's use of proverbs by his narrators and characters. According to Cameron Louis's 'The Concept of the Proverb in Middle English', Proverbium 14 (1997) and MED, the distinction between the proverb and sentence or maxim was not necessarily made in Chaucer's age. On the basis of that idea, this paper attempts to describe Chaucer's comic art produced by the misapplication of proverbs, notably represented by Pandarus in Troilus and Criseyde, John in the Miller's Tale, January in the Merchant's Tale (in whom intellectual and physical blindness are combined), and the Friar in the Summoner's Tale. The proverbs these characters used were closely related to everyday experience in the medieval age. The medieval people would have enjoyed listening to the comic tales Chaucer's characters narrated with proverbs, laughing at the personalities they presented, especially the foolish ones, and would have realized that they were as human as the characters. The paper concludes that the proverbs could have been an effective form of communication between Chaucer and his audience and that they also could have been the source of humorous or comic effects.
聖トマス大学の論文
2005-02-28