MARC Record from marc_columbia

LEADER: 04454pam a2200397 a 4500
001 5540812
005 20221121182154.0
008 050304t20052005nju b 001 0 eng
010 $a 2005006434
020 $a0838640834 (alk. paper)
024 3 $a9780838640838
035 $a(OCoLC)OCM58431769
035 $a(NNC)5540812
035 $a5540812
040 $aDLC$cDLC$dC#P$dOrLoB-B
050 00 $aPR1933.N27$bV36 2005
082 00 $a821/.1$222
100 1 $aVan Dyke, Carolynn,$d1947-$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n84043665
245 10 $aChaucer's agents :$bcause and representation in Chaucerian narrative /$cCarolynn Van Dyke.
260 $aMadison [N.J.] :$bFairleigh Dickinson University Press,$c[2005], ©2005.
300 $a371 pages ;$c25 cm
336 $atext$btxt$2rdacontent
337 $aunmediated$bn$2rdamedia
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references (p. 323-352) and index.
505 00 $g1.$tIntroduction : Chaucer and the subject of agency --$g2.$tDreaming the real : Chaucer does allegory --$g3.$tBeyond Canacee's ring : animal agency in three Canterbury tales --$g4.$t"He that alle thing may bynde" : the agency of Chaucer's pagan gods --$g5.$tGoode women, maydenes and wyves : exemplary agency and its discontents --$g6.$t"That am nat I" : the Wife of Bath, Criseyde, and the possibility of subjective agency --$g7.$tSeeing through Chaucer : authorial agency and the representation of truth --$g8.$tFre agency.
520 1 $a"The ever-proliferating views of Chaucer's texts amount in part to disagreements about who or what determines his narratives: lifelike characters, doctrinal principles, the cycles of history, material conditions, the prototypical subject, the reader, even the text itself. In Chaucer's Agents, Carolynn Van Dyke shifts our focus from any particular kind of cause to the representation of cause itself - that is, to agency." ""Agency" is widely used but seldom defined. Indeed, academic writers use it in contrary ways. To linguists, philosophers, and most social scientists, it means the power to initiate action, but economists and legal scholars define it as delegated power. Defining "agency" broadly as the capacity to cause action, Van Dyke argues that the word's opposing uses reveal a fundamental ambiguity: agency is always double, autonomous and subordinate." "That doubleness was particularly evident in late-medieval England. Political and ecclesiastical rulers aggrandized power with instruments that weakened it. Philosophers denied reality of universal ideas but acknowledged their force as mental representations. Textual scholars and poets simultaneously down-played and emphasized human authorship." "Chaucer responded to those fluctuations by modeling them. His works deploy an exceptional range of agents, from lifelike peasants to transcendent personifications, and the kind of agency continually changes both within and among individual texts." "Chaucer's Agents draws on medieval and modern theories of agency to provide fresh readings of the major Chaucerian texts. Collectively, those readings aim to illuminate Chaucer's responses to two great problems of agency: the degree to which human beings and forces qualify as agents, and the equal reference of "agent" to initiators and instruments. Each chapter surveys medieval conceptions of the agency in question - allegorical Realities, intelligent animals, pagan gods, women, and the author - and then follows that kind of agent through representative Chaucerian texts. Readers have long recognized Chaucer's interest in questions of causation; Van Dyke shows that his answers to those questions shape, even constitute, his narratives."--BOOK JACKET.
600 10 $aChaucer, Geoffrey,$d-1400$xTechnique.
600 10 $aChaucer, Geoffrey,$d-1400$xPhilosophy.
650 0 $aNarration (Rhetoric)$xHistory$yTo 1500.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2008108207
650 0 $aPhilosophy, Medieval, in literature.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh94007811
650 0 $aAgent (Philosophy) in literature.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh93007981
650 0 $aCausation in literature.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh94002670
650 0 $aMimesis in literature.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85085454
650 0 $aRhetoric, Medieval.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85113635
852 00 $bglx$hPR1933.N27$iV36 2005
852 00 $bbar$hPR1933.N27$iV36 2005