Eros and Pilgrimage in Chaucer’s and Shakespeare’s Poetry

• Authors: Barbara Kowalik
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The paper discusses erotic desire and the motif of going on pilgrimage in the opening of Geoffrey Chaucer’s General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales and in William Shakespeare’s sonnets. What connects most of the texts chosen for consideration in the paper is their diptych-like composition, corresponding to the dual theme of eros and pilgrimage. At the outset, I read the first eighteen lines of Chaucer’s Prologue and demonstrate how the passage attempts to balance and reconcile the eroticism underlying the description of nature at springtime with Christian devotion and the spirit of compunction. I support the view that the passage is the first wing of a diptych-like construction opening the General Prologue. The second part of the paper focuses on the motif of pilgrimage, particularly erotic pilgrimage, in Shakespeare’s sonnets. I observe that most of the sonnets that exploit the conceit of travel to the beloved form lyrical diptychs. Shakespeare reverses the medieval hierarchy of pilgrimage and desire espoused by Chaucer. Both poets explore and use to their own ends the tensions inherent in the juxtaposition of sacred and profane love. Their compositions encode deeper emotional patterns of desire: Chaucer’s narrator channels sexual drives into the route of communal national penance, whereas the Shakespearean persona employs religious sentiments in the service of private erotic infatuations.

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Łódzki. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
• Journal: Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture
• Year: 2013
• Volume: 3
• Pages: 27-41

Dates

published

2013-11-01

online

2013-11-01

Contributors

author

Barbara Kowalik

• University of Warsaw

References

• Chaucer, Geoffrey. The General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales and The Retraction. The Riverside Chaucer. Ed. Larry D. Benson. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1988. 3-36, 328. Print.
• Eckhardt, Caroline D. “Genre.” A Companion to Chaucer. Ed. Peter Brown. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. 180-94. Print.
• Eliot, T.S. Selected Poems. London: Faber, 1961. Print.
• Holton, Amanda. “An Obscured Tradition: The Sonnet and Its Fourteen- Line Predecessors.” The Review of English Studies 62.255 (2011): 373-92. Print.[WoS]
• The Holy Bible, in the King James Version. Nashville-New York: Nelson, 1981. Print.
• Going, William T. Scanty Plot of Ground: Studies in the Victorian Sonnet. The Hague: Mouton, 1976. Print.
• Jarvis, Robin. Romantic Writing and Pedestrian Travel. New York: St. Martin’s, 1997. Print.
• Łączyńska, Klaudia. “‘Bound / Within the sonnet’s scanty plot of ground’? The Space of a Sonnet in George Meredith’s Modern Love.” FromQueen Anne to Queen Victoria: Readings in 18th and 19th century Britishliterature and culture. Vol. 2. Ed. Grażyna Bystydzieńska and Emma Harris. Warszawa: Ośrodek Studiów Brytyjskich, Uniwersytet Warszawski, 2010. 281-90. Print.
• Schoenfeldt, Michael. Shakespeare’s Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010. Print.
• Shakespeare, William. Sonnets. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Ed. W. J. Craig. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1984. 1199-220. Print.
• Spearing, A.C. “Central and Displaced Sovereignty in Three Medieval Poems.” The Review of English Studies, New Series, 33.131 (1982): 73-88. Print.
• Tiffany, Grace. Love’s Pilgrimage: The Holy Journey in English RenaissanceLiterature. Newark: U of Delaware P, 2006. Print.
• Westrem, Scott D. “Geography and Travel.” A Companion to Chaucer. Ed. Peter Brown. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. 195-217. Print.
• Wilcockson, Colin. “The Opening of Chaucer’s General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales. A Diptych.” The Review of English Studies, New Series, 50.199 (1999): 345-50. Print.

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/texmat-2013-0024