Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T07:52:52.997Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Canterbury Tales and the Arabic Frame Tradition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Katharine Slater Gittes
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Canterbury Tales is the culmination of a frame tradition that originated and developed in Arabia, not in the West. The Arabic practice of enclosing tales within a frame may be explained by principles of organization peculiar to medieval Arabic literature, art, music, and mathematics: a preference for concreteness, a stress on autonomous elements, and a reliance on external organizing devices. Most Arabic literature emphasizes the individual unit; frames remain open-ended and inconclusive and rarely determine the subject or form of any included part. Although many Western characteristics are present in medieval European frame narratives like the Disciplina Clericalis, the Decameron, and the Confessio Amantis, those works, nonetheless, reveal themselves as continuations of the Arabic tradition. Even the Canterbury Tales, with all its subtle artistry, retains qualities typical of its Arabic ancestors, notably the controlling travelpilgrimage motif, the pointedly random order of tales, and the prominent authorial personality.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 98 , Issue 2 , March 1983 , pp. 237 - 251
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1983

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Baldwin, Ralph. The Unity of the Canterbury Tales. Anglistica, 5. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1955.Google Scholar
Braddy, Haldeen. “The Genre of Chaucer's Squire's Tale.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 41 (1942):279–90.Google Scholar
Chaitanya, Krishna. A New History of Sanskrit Literature. London: Asia Publishing House, 1962.Google Scholar
Donaldson, E. Talbot. “Chaucer the Pilgrim.” PMLA 69 (1954):928–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eliason, Norman E. The Language of Chaucer's Poetry. Anglistica, 17. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1972.Google Scholar
Farmer, Henry George. “Music.” In A History of Muslim Philosophy. Ed. Sharif, M. M. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1966, 2:1124–78.Google Scholar
Farmer, Henry George. “The Music of Islam.” In Ancient and Oriental Music. Ed. Wellesz, Egon. London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1957, 421–77.Google Scholar
Ferrante, Joan M. “The Frame Characters of the Decameron: A Progression of Virtues.” Romance Philology 19 (1965): 212–26.Google Scholar
Gabrieli, Francesco. “Islam in the Mediterranean World.” In The Legacy of Islam. Ed. Schacht, Joseph and Bosworth, C. E. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon, 1974, 63–104.Google Scholar
Gerhardt, Mia I. The Art of Storytelling. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1963.Google Scholar
Goldziher, Ignace. A Short History of Classical Arabic Literature. Trans., rev., and enl. by Joseph Desomogyi. Hildesheim: Olms, 1966.Google Scholar
Grabar, Oleg. “Architecture.” In The Legacy of Islam. Ed. Schacht, Joseph and Bosworth, C. E. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon, 1974, 244–73.Google Scholar
Grabar, Oleg. Formation of Islamic Art. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1973.Google Scholar
Grunebaum, G. E. von. Islam. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1961.Google Scholar
Grunebaum, G. E. von. Medieval Islam. 2nd ed. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1953.Google Scholar
Hermes, Eberhard. Introd. Trans. P. R. Quarrie. In The Disciplina Clericalis of Petrus Alfonsi. London: Routledge, 1977.Google Scholar
Hitti, Philip K. Islam: A Way of Life. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1970.Google Scholar
Howard, Donald R. The Idea of the Canterbury Tales. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1978.Google Scholar
Jackson, Gabriel. The Making of Medieval Spain. New York: Harcourt, 1972.Google Scholar
Jairazbhoy, R. A. An Outline of Islamic Architecture. Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1972.Google Scholar
Jordan, Robert M. Chaucer and the Shape of Creation. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1967.Google Scholar
Keith, A. Berriedale. A History of Sanskrit Literature. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1920.Google Scholar
Kittredge, George Lyman. Chaucer and His Poetry. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1915.Google Scholar
Kline, Morris. Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1972.Google Scholar
Kramer, Edna E. The Nature and Growth of Modern Mathematics. Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett, 1974.Google Scholar
Landau, Rom. Islam and the Arabs. New York: Macmillan, 1959.Google Scholar
Leff, Gordon. The Dissolution of the Medieval Outlook. New York: Harper, 1976.Google Scholar
The Life and Works of lahiz. Trans into French Charles Pellat. Trans, from the French D. M. Hawke. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1969.Google Scholar
Lumiansky, R. M. Of Sondry Folk: The Dramatic Principle in the Canterbury Tales. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1955.Google Scholar
Lyall, Charles James, ed. Translations of Ancient Arabic Poetry. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1930.Google Scholar
Macauley, G. C., ed. Complete Works of John Gower. 1901; rpt. Grosse Pointe, Mich.: Scholarly, 1968.Google Scholar
Manly, John Matthews. Some New Light on Chaucer. 1926; rpt. Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1959.Google Scholar
Marmura, Ella. “Arabic Literature: A Living Heritage.” In Introduction to Islamic Civilisation. Ed. Savory, R. M. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1976, 61–70.Google Scholar
Marmura, Michael E. “God and His Creation: Two Medieval Islamic Views.” In Introduction to Islamic Civilisation. Ed. Savory, R. M. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1976, 46–53.Google Scholar
Metlitzki, Dorothée. The Matter of Araby in Medieval England. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Moore, Arthur K. “Medieval English Literature and the Question of Unity.” Modern Philology 65 (1968): 285–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nicholson, Reynold A. A Literary History of the Arabs. 1907; rpt. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1953.Google Scholar
Perry, B. E. The Origin of the Book of Sindbad. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1960.Google Scholar
Pratt, Robert A., and Young, Karl. “The Literary Framework of the Canterbury Tales.” In Sources and Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Ed. W. F. Bryan and Germaine Dempster. 1941; rpt. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities, 1958, 1–81.Google Scholar
Robinson, F. N., ed. The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton, 1957.Google Scholar
Rosenthal, Franz. “Literature.” In The Legacy of Islam. Ed. Schacht, Joseph and Bosworth, C. E. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon, 1974, 321–49.Google Scholar
Ruggiers, Paul G. The Art of the Canterbury Tales. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1965.Google Scholar
Ryder, Arthur W., trans. The Panchatantra. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1925.Google Scholar
Scaglione, Aldo D. Nature and Love in the Late Middle Ages. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1963.Google Scholar
Shahriyar, Buzurg Ibn. The Book of the Marvels of India. Trans. Quennell, Peter. London: Routledge, 1928.Google Scholar
Simson, Otto von. The Gothic Cathedral. New York: Harper, 1964.Google Scholar
Vossler, Carlos. España y Europa. Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Polfticos, 1951.Google Scholar
Wright, O. “Music.” In The Legacy of Islam. Ed. Schacht, Joseph and Bosworth, C. E. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon, 1974, 489–505.Google Scholar
Zacher, Christian K. Curiosity and Pilgrimage. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1976.Google Scholar