Medieval Fictionality: Poetics, Emotion, and Chaucer

Department of English and Related Literature Annual Riddy Lecture

In this lecture, I explore late-medieval understandings of what fiction was, and what fiction did. In the context of the reception of Aristotle in the later Middle Ages, I tease out the relationship between poetry, rhetoric, and ethics. I compare classical literary theory with medieval literary theory, and draw on recent work on the history of the emotions, with a strong focus on the role of the reader. What was fiction defined against in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries? What were its powers in comparison to theology, or to rhetoric? My literary examples will centre on Chaucer’s poetry, ranging widely across his oeuvre.

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This lecture will not be recorded and the Q&A will only be open to in-person attendees.

Image: St. Augustine in His Study, French (Artist), 1460, The Walters Art Museum, Creative Commons License.