Type
Text
Type
Thesis
Advisor
Martinez Pizarro, Joaquin | Spector, Stephen.
Date
2012-08-01
Keywords
Literature
Department
Department of English
Language
en_US
Source
This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.
Identifier
http://hdl.handle.net/11401/71348
Publisher
The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.
Format
application/pdf
Abstract
In Europe during the fourteenth century the perception of time was revolutionized by the invention of the mechanical clock. The device rendered the old qualitative, self referential perception of time obsolete and replaced it with a means of time reckoning abstracted from human experience. In this thesis I will analyze the influence of the emergence of the mechanical clock on Geoffrey Chaucer's earliest know work: The Book of the Duchess. I utilize close reading and numerology to interpret the relationship between the forest and the humans of the Dreamscape. Ultimately, I argue that Chaucer allocates the old qualitative perception of time to the humans and contrasts it with the quantitative time of the forest. He does this in order to show that perceiving time apart from human experience inevitably goes against human nature or "kynde" by elucidating a qualitative approach to time's influence on the supreme human act of composition. | 47 pages
Recommended Citation
Mirza, Kassim, "Tyme, Rime, Minde & Kinde: The Reverberation of Time in Composition, Cognition & Kynde in The Book of the Duchess" (2012). Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions). 554.
https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/stony-brook-theses-and-dissertations-collection/554