Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-sv6ng Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-08T06:47:22.671Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hidden Depths: Dialogue and Characterization in Chaucer and Malory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Peter R. Schroeder
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Although we know that medieval writers were not novelists, we can still succumb to the illusion that the characters in their works occasionally exhibit a degree of psychological complexity and “depth” out of keeping with our historical expectations. Chaucer's Criseyde and Malory's Guinevere are such characters; in both, the illusion results largely from a technique of using dialogue to suggest responses, thoughts, or feelings that are otherwise hidden. To achieve such suggestiveness, Chaucer and Malory employ a device that theorists of speech acts call “implicature.” As we overhear the words of Criseyde and Guinevere, we must constantly fill in gaps, supply missing relations, and guess at some “real” meaning that the surface meaning seems to conceal. Through this process we participate in the construction of two characters whose elusiveness, opacity, and apparent inconsistency are surprisingly verisimilar.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 98 , Issue 3 , May 1983 , pp. 374 - 387
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1983

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Aers, David. Chaucer, Langland and the Creative Imagination. London: Routledge, 1980.Google Scholar
Barney, Stephen A., ed. Chaucer's Troilus: Essays in Criticism. London: Scolar, 1980.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Trans. Miller, Richard. London: Jonathan Cape, 1975.Google Scholar
Benson, Larry D. Malory's Morte Darthur. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1976.Google Scholar
Bloomfield, Morton W. “Episodic Motivation in Epic and Romance.” In his Essays and Explorations. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1970, 97–128.Google Scholar
Brewer, D. S., ed. The Morte Darthur: Parts Seven and Eight. By Sir Thomas Malory. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1974.Google Scholar
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Ed. Robinson, F. N. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton, 1957.Google Scholar
Cixous, Hélène. “The Character of ‘Character.‘ ” New Literary History 5 (1974): 383–402.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohn, Dorrit. Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1978.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Donaldson, E. Talbot. “Briseis, Briseida, Criseyde, Cresseid, Cressid: Progress of a Heroine.” In Chaucerian Problems and Perspectives. Ed. Vasta, Edward and Thundy, Zacharias P. Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame Univ. Press, 1979, 3–12.Google Scholar
Faral, Edmond. Les Arts poétiques du XIIe et du XIIIe siècle. Bibliothèque de l'école des hautes études, no. 238. Paris, 1924.Google Scholar
Field, P. J. C. Romance and Chronicle: A Study of Malory's Prose Style. London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1971.Google Scholar
Gardiner, Patrick. “Sartre on Character and Self-Knowledge.” New Literary History 9 (1977–78): 65–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grice, H. P. “Logic and Conversation.” In Speech Acts. Vol. 3 of Syntax and Semantics. Ed. Cole, Peter and Morgan, lerry L. New York: Academic, 1975, 41–58.Google Scholar
Hanning, Robert W. The Individual in Twelfth-Century Romance. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Hazlitt, William. “On Chaucer and Spenser.” In Five Hundred Years of Chaucer Criticism and Allusion. Ed. Spurgeon, Caroline F. E. New York: Russell and Russell, 1960, 2:98–106.Google Scholar
Howard, Donald. “Experience, Language, and Consciousness: Troilus and Criseyde, II, 596–931.” In Medieval Literature and Folklore Studies: Essays in Honor of Francis Lee Utley. Ed. Mandel, Jerome and Rosenberg, Bruce A. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1970, 173–92.Google Scholar
Lambert, Mark. Malory: Style and Vision in Le Morte Darthur. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Lancelot. Ed. Micha, Alexandre. Genève: Droz, 1978.Google Scholar
The Letters of Saint Theresa of Jesus. Trans. Peers, E. Allison. London: Burns Oates, 1951.Google Scholar
Lewis, C. S. “What Chaucer Really Did to Il filostrato.” Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association 17 (1932): 56–75.Google Scholar
Macauley, Robie, and Lanning, George. Technique in Fiction. New York: Harper, 1964.Google Scholar
The Magi, Herod, and the Slaughter of the Innocents. In Chief Pre-Shakespearean Dramas. Ed. Adams, Joseph Quincy. Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton, 1924, 158–66.Google Scholar
Malory, Sir Thomas. The Works of Sir Thomas Malory. Ed. Vinaver, Eugene. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971.Google Scholar
Mehl, Dieter. “The Audience of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde.” In Chaucer's Troilus: Essays in Criticism. Ed. Barney, Stephen A. London: Scolar, 1980, 211–29.Google Scholar
Mehl, Dieter. The Middle English Romances of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. London: Routledge, 1968.Google Scholar
Mizener, Arthur. “Character and Action in the Case of Criseyde.” PMLA 54 (1939): 65–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
La Mort le roi Artu. Ed. Frappier, Jean. Textes littéraires français. Paris: Droz, 1956.Google Scholar
Muscatine, Charles. Chaucer and the French Tradition. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1969.Google Scholar
Proust, Marcel. Remembrance of Things Past. Trans. Scott Moncrieff, C. K. and Kilmartin, Terence. New York: Random, 1981.Google Scholar
Sarraute, Nathalie. The Age of Suspicion. Trans. Jolas, Maria. New York: Braziller, 1963.Google Scholar
Stevens, Martin. “Chaucer and Modernism: An Essay in Criticism.” In Chaucer at Albany. Ed. Robbins, Rossell Hope. New York: Franklin, 1975, 193–216.Google Scholar