Chaucer and the mystics
Subtitle: the Canterbury tales and the genre of devotional prose
By: Robert Boenig.
Publisher: Bucknell University Press; Associated University Presses; UNKNO
Published: 1995
Place of publication: Lewisburg, Pa; London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 231
Subjects: Chaucer, Geoffrey, d. 1400.; Chaucer, Geoffrey, d. 1400 -- Religion.; English prose literature -- Middle English, 1100-1500 -- History and criticism.; Devotional literature, English (Middle) -- History and criticism.; Mysticism -- England -- History -- Middle Ages, 600-1500.; Christian pilgrims and pilgrimages in literature.; Mysticism in literature.; Literary form -- History -- To 1500.
Description: Chaucer and the Mystics is a contextualization of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in terms of the genre Chaucer himself valorizes in his Retraction, the prose treatise of morality and devotion.

The many works of this kind have not yet been studied for their connections with Chaucer's writings - a surprising fact, given Chaucer's interest in them and the occasional inclusion of works like the Parson's Tale, the Tale of Melibee, and the Monk's Tale anonymously in flfteenth-century compendia of devotional treatises.

Analogues among the five great Middle English mystics (Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, Julian of Norwich, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, and Margery Kempe), together with works from the body of anonymous treatises of prose devotion, are described, with attention given to Chaucer's sometimes comic, sometimes serious purposes.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [203]-221) and index.