Chaucer and the Rhetoric of Comedy

FAIN: FB-13244-77

James R. Andreas
Clemson University (Clemson, SC 29634-0001)

To measure Chaucer's development into a comic genius in terms of the aesthetic of comedy available to him during the fourteenth century. Chaucer's attempt to refashion the French fabliau into a flexible poetic instrument with which to view and evaluate the customs and attitudes of his time will be an important area of the study as will his facility in turning the instruments of rhetoric to the comic scale.