Chaucerian representations of human behavior: Determined and free action in the 'Knight's Tale' and the 'Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale'

This dissertation examines Chaucer's treatment of human agency in the Canterbury Tales within the framework defined by the concept of pilgrimage and in the context of the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre's notion of a tradition as "an historically extended, socially embedded argument, and an argument precisely in part about the goods which constitute the tradition." The specific problem dealt with is the freedom of the human will as it makes choices that are considered, in the religious terms of pilgrimage, as leading to either salvation or damnation. My method is to examine the Knight's Tale as the paradigmatic deterministic account in the Canterbury Tales and to show how that account is contested, principally by the Wife of Bath, but also by the Clerk and the Second Nun. Key to my study is the analysis of Chaucer's incorporation of ideas and tropes from Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy and the Roman de la Rose. Chaucer's treatment of the problem of the will is brought into conversation with the treatment of the problem by Thomas Aquinas and Dante. My method and conclusions are meant in part as a corrective to current trends in Chaucer criticism founded on psychoanalytical theory. I attempt to read and understand Chaucer as part of an on-going discussion that includes classical as well as Christian thinkers and poets, and to show that that discussion contains its own standards of integrity and coherence which, while distinct from those associated with postmodern theory, continue to provide a satisfactory account of the problem of determinism and free will.