Wearing Your Heart on Your Face: Reading Lovesickness and the Suicidal Impulse in Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer frequently depicts the emotions of his characters via the outward physical signs of the body, and he often does so using a discourse that draws on Galenic theories. A striking example of Chaucer's medicalized descriptions of emotion is his adaptation of the suicidal impulse ass...

Full description

Saved in:

Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Literature and medicine 2015-09, Vol.33 (2), p.258-278
Main Author:	McNamara, Rebecca F
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	1100-1499 Middle English period 1400 Audiences Canterbury Tales Chaucer Chaucer, Geoffrey Chaucer, Geoffrey (1340?-1400) Chaucer, Geoffrey(1340/5-1400) Criticism and interpretation Emotions England English Literature facial expression Famous Persons Female Galen Geoffrey Chaucer Grief History, Medieval Humans Knight's Tale Literature, Medieval - history Love Lovesickness Lovesickness in literature Male medical language Medicine Medicine in Literature Middle English Middle English and Fifteenth Century Pain Physiology Poetry Poetry as Topic - history Reading Separate Works suffering Suicidal Ideation Suicide Suicide in literature Suicides & suicide attempts The Book of the Duchess The Canterbury Tales The Knight's Tale
Online Access:	Get full text
Tags:	Add Tag No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!

Description
Summary:	Geoffrey Chaucer frequently depicts the emotions of his characters via the outward physical signs of the body, and he often does so using a discourse that draws on Galenic theories. A striking example of Chaucer's medicalized descriptions of emotion is his adaptation of the suicidal impulse associated with lovesickness. Chaucer reconstructs this motif in "The Knight's Tale" and The Book of the Duchess by altering his sources (Boccaccio, and Froissart and Machaut) to anatomize the emotional body of the suffering knight. Through the medicalized language of bodily health describing emotional upheavals, other characters and the reader are prompted to feel with and begin to understand and appropriately respond to the suffering individual. This reading shows Chaucer using moments of embodied emotional examination to teach his audience how to read, interpret, and respond to literature.
ISSN:	0278-9671 1080-6571 1080-6571