Skip to main content Skip to search Skip to search

Literary Criticism Medieval

The Logic of Love in the Canterbury Tales

by (author) Manish Sharma

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
Apr 2022
Category
Medieval, Medieval
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781487539566
    Publish Date
    Apr 2022
    List Price
    $95.00
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9781487509033
    Publish Date
    Jul 2022
    List Price
    $95.00

Add it to your shelf

Where to buy it

Description

The Logic of Love in The Canterbury Tales argues that Geoffrey Chaucer’s magnum opus draws inventively on the resources of late medieval logic to conceive of love as an "insoluble." Philosophers of the fourteenth century expended great effort to solve insolubilia, like the notorious Liar paradox, in order to decide upon their truth or falsity. For Chaucer, however, and in keeping with Christ’s admonition from the Sermon on the Mount, the lover does not judge – does not decide on – the beloved.

 

Through a series of detailed and rigorously "non-judgmental" readings, Manish Sharma provides new insight into each of the prologues and tales and intervenes into scholarly debates about their collective import. In so doing, The Logic of Love in The Canterbury Tales deploys Chaucer’s understanding of charity to consider the limitations of modern critical approaches to The Canterbury Tales, including deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and gender theory. In the course of the analysis, Sharma shows not only how love and medieval philosophy together inform Chaucerian composition, but also how Chaucer could serve as a resource for contemporary theoretical reflections on love and ethics.

About the author

Manish Sharma is an associate professor in the Department of English at Concordia University.

Manish Sharma's profile page

Other titles by