The poem leads its audience to accept death as part of this law by showing the Black Knight's recognition of the pitiableness of the human condition and the Dreamer's development. Chaucer's Self-Portrait in the Book of the Duchess. Challenges the critical tradition that Chaucer's persona in Book of the Duchess suffers his eight-year sickness out of love, pointing out that the poem never presents him as a lover and often suggests that he is uncourtly. Assesses the formal aspects of confession, autobiography, and dream vision in Book of the Duchess to show how they are historically related and how they inform the poem. The interaction of autobiography, confession of love, and the sacrament of penance has precedent in Augustine's Confessions and Roman de la rose.
Elegy is only a secondary concern in Chaucer's poem.
The Elegaic Pattern of the Book of the Duchess. In Signs and Symbols in Chaucer's Poetry. Argues that Chaucer's Book of the Duchess emulates Machaut's dit amoreaux, yet shows unmistakeable similarities to figurative visions like Pearl and Dante's Purgatorio. University of North Carolina Studies in Comparative Literature, no. The Roman pervades Chaucer's poem.