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Chaucerian Imperfections: The Other And The Turbulant Self, Ahmed Seif

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is interested in forms of “imperfection” in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. I define “imperfection” as an authorial gesture performed to narrate an idealized virwhile depriving it from its idealism. The imperfection of a virtue, however, does not happen absolutely. It is the character’s incomplete, distorted, or decadent command of a given virtue, rather than the viritself, that makes it imperfect. Consisting of three chapters, the thesis examines Chaucer’s imperfection of things idealized within two medieval spaces: a) the ecclesiastical institution of Church and b) the secular institution of Knighthood. This is why the thesis settled on the Prioress’s …