Narrative, Authority and Power The Medieval Exemplum and the Chaucerian Tradition

A study of how Chaucer and his successors used the exemplum as a vehicle for establishing the moral authority of their emerging vernacular tradition.

Little attention has been paid to the political and ideological significance of the exemplum, a brief narrative form used to illustrate a moral. Through a study of four major works in the Chaucerian tradition (The Canterbury Tales, John Gower's Confessio Amantis, Thomas Hoccleve's Regement of Princes, and Lydgate's Fall of Princes), Scanlon redefines the exemplum as a 'narrative enactment of cultural authority'. He traces its development through the two strands of the medieval Latin tradition which the Chaucerians appropriate: the sermon exemplum, and the public exemplum of the Mirrors of Princes. In so doing, he reveals how Chaucer and his successors used these two forms of exemplum to explore the differences between clerical authority and lay power, and to establish the moral and cultural authority of their emergent vernacular tradition.

Acknowledgements; Introduction: Exemplarity and Authority in the Middle Ages: 1. Chaucer's Parson; 2. Redefining the exemplum: narrative, ideology and subjectivity; 3. Auctoritas and potestas: a model of analysis for medieval culture; Part I. The Latin Tradition: 4. The sermon exemplum; 5. The public exemplum; Part II. The Chaucerian Tradition: 6. Exemplarity and the Chaucerian tradition; 7. Canterbury Tales (I): from preacher to prince; 8. Canterbury Tales (II): from preaching to poetry; 9. Bad examples: Gower's Confessio Amantis; 10. The Chaucerian tradition in the fifteenth century; Bibliography; Index.

Little attention has been paid to the political and ideological significance of the medieval exemplum, a brief narrative form used to illustrate a moral. Through a study of four major works in the Chaucerian tradition, Professor Scanlon redefines the exemplum as a 'narrative enactment of cultural authority'.