Author Description

Chaucer's Ethical Philosophy Reads Chaucer In New Ways, Revealing His Deep Engagement With The Most Urgent Questions Of Modern Political And Ethical Philosophy. The Book Offers Original Readings Of Troilus And Criseyde, The Canterbury Tales, And The Book Of The Duchess, Placing Chaucer In Close Dialogue Not Only With Medieval Philosophy And Theology, And His Great European Literary Sources (boccaccio, Dante, Guillaume De Machaut) But Also With Some Major Figures And Concepts Of Modern Philosophical Thought (hegel, Levinas, Wittgenstein, Butler; Recognition, Subjectivity, Gender). It Thereby Illuminates His Use Of Distinctively Medieval Forms And Structures Of Narrative To Explore Ideas And Develop Philosophies That We Have Been Conditioned To Think Of As Exclusively Modern. Chaucer's Fictional Experiments Are Shown To Be As Philosophically Complex And Ethically Powerful As Anything In Current Thought-- Provided By Publisher.