Plurality And Dialogue

Geoffrey Chaucer, honored as father of English poetry, is a distinguished medieval English writer. His representative work, The Canterbury Tales is an encyclopedic literary work that epitomizes the achievements of Middle English literature and lays the foundation for English literary tradition in the following centuries. Since its publication, The Canterbury Tales has attracted continuous attention and has been studied by critics and scholars from different perspectives and with different critical methods. On the basis of previous studies, this dissertation mainly applies Bakhtinian dialogical theory about polyphony, carnivalization and intertextuality, together with the New Criticism, Narratology, New Historicism and Cultural poetics, to make a systematical in-depth study of the plurality and dialogue in the text and to reveal the multiplicity and originality of Chaucer’s literary thought and artistic features.Besides the introduction and conclusion, this dissertation falls into four chapters. The introduction starts with a brief presentation of the great importance of Chaucer and The Canterbury Tales in English literary history and a review of earlier critical studies at home and abroad from which this dissertation particularly benefits. It also demonstrates the applicability of Bakhtinian theory and modern narrative strategy to this study of plurality and dialogue in The Canterbury Tales. Finally, it introduces the basic views, the content, and the structure of the dissertation.Chapter One discusses the plurality in The Canterbury Tales. It focuses on the multi-level narrative structure, the variety of narrative viewpoints, diversity of literary genres and multiple thematic concerns to reveal the essential nature of plurality of the text. The poet uses the pilgrimage as the main narrative structure as well as its narrative frame and many other medieval narrative forms so as to give a multi-level narrative structure to this masterpiece.The text makes a good use of different narrators, including Chaucer the poet, Chaucer the pilgrim, and the pilgrim-narrators, to narrate the pilgrimage and the stories from different perspectives, which significantly increases the plurality and dialogue of the work. Moreover, in the text, the poet employs almost all the major medieval literary genres such as romance, fabliau, allegory and religious narratives, behind each of which stands a long established tradition. Therefore the diversity of genres presents the plurality and interaction of different cultural and literary traditions and thoughts. The last part of this chapter analyzes the thematic plurality and openness through a discussion of the contradictions and conflicts in values among the stories by the pilgrims. Chapter Two aims to demonstrate the polyphonic dialogue in the text. This chapter starts from analyzing the micro-dialogue in narrative texture to the macro-dialogue between different genres, between narrative structures, and between different cultural and intellectual thoughts. Bakhtin thinks that a polyphonic dialogue takes place between independent, fully valued, and unmerged voices in a work. In this work, the author does not impose his idea upon those pilgrims who come from all walks of life, not treating them as his spokesman, but let them represent their own interests, express their own independent consciousness, and stand for their own values. Besides, Chaucer combines those stories by pilgrims with the interactions of the pilgrims on the pilgrimage. Through the contradictions and conflicts among those pilgrims, the text highlights their dialogic relationship.Chapter Three focuses on the analysis of carnivalesque dialogue in the text. As an important component of Bakhtinian theory, carnivaleque poetics advocates a kind of equal and dialogic spirit, a kind of humanist thought. Living in a transitional period of profound changes, Chaucer is not only influenced by medieval carnivalesque literary tradition, but also affected by humanist thoughts newly germinated in Italy, which together produce the carnival and dialogic spirit in his work.The carnivalesque dialogue of the text is fully presented in the carnivalized social context, the carnivalesque pilgrimage, the carnivalesque plaza language, and the carnivalesque features of those genres employed by different pilgrims in telling their stories.Chapter Four mainly explores the intertextual dialogue of the text. The chapter mainly employs intertextual theory and Bakhtin’s thinking about intertextuality to analyze the intertextual features in The Canterbury Tales, focusing on the intertextual dialogue between The Canterbury Tales and such major medieval European cultural and literary traditions as French, Italian, classic, and religious, and their representative schools and writers. Thus, the dissertation broadens and deepens its study of the plurality and dialogue of The Canterbury Tales on the level of cultural and literary traditions.The dissertation concludes that the plurality and dialogue of The Canterbury Tales, that is, the text’s polyphony, carnivalization, intertextual dialogue, by nature reflects the cultural plurality in medieval English society and different schools of literary traditions and thinking at that time and, therefore, have special cultural and literary significance.