Chaucer and the Trivium
The Mindsong of the Canterbury Tales
by J. Stephen
Russell
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J. Stephen Russell examines the impact that Chaucer’s
education had on his greatest work, the Canterbury Tales,
and demonstrates that understanding the nature of education in
the Middle Ages, especially linguistic education, provides
important insights into Chaucer’s poem.
Specifically, he shows that the medieval trivium (a curriculum of
logic, grammar, and rhetoric) conveyed attitudes about
expression, communication, and personality subtly but powerfully
different from modern attitudes and that a recognition of these
differences completely changes the nature of poems such as the
general prologue and the tales of the knight, man of law, and
clerk.
Russell begins with a concise, lucid account of the medieval trivium, synthesizing a variety of sources in an engaging
explanation of such potentially dry subjects as grammar and
conceptual hierarchies. He then examines four parts of the Canterbury
Tales, providing insight into Chaucer’s method of
presenting information about the pilgrims in the "General
Prologue," the role of language in the "Man of
Law’s Tale," the definition of man in the
"Knight’s Tale," and the Artes in the
"Clerk’s Tale." Finally, he extends his discussion
to the "Tale of Melibee" and the tales of the wife of
Bath, franklin, and nun’s priest and suggests avenues for
further research based on the trivium.
For the modern reader, this work re-creates the mental parameters
of a medieval education and provides a view of Chaucer’s
conception of the way the world is organized, the foundation of
his intellectual and artistic development.
J. Stephen Russell is associate professor of
English at Hofstra University and the author of The English
Dream Vision (a Choice Outstanding Book), and the
editor of Allegoresis.
1998. 224 pp. 6 X 9.
Notes, bibliography, index, 17 diagrams.
ISBN 0-8130-1637-1Cloth, $55.00
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"An important addition to Chaucer studies and to medieval culture studies. . . . Russell's overall point is the way the trivial curriculum, with its almost-total focus on language and logic, would have informed the thinking models/mental habits of students of Chaucer's time, including Chaucer himself -- informed their attitudes toward language and truth and human reality; and the demonstrations and explanations he offers are clear, valid, and enlightening. This is an important book."--
Medieval Review
"Confidently negotiates contemporary Chaucerian scholarship, solidly convincing readers that the trivium can serve as an important lens through which we can read medieval literary texts."
--Rhetorica
"Russell provides a valuable synthesis of a variety of scholarly resources on the trivium, an important and often neglected topic in Chaucer studies."--Lorraine K. Stock, University of Houston