Chaucer’s Augustinian Poetics Reconsidered

Taking issue with D. W. Robertson, Jr.’s influential analysis of De doctrina christianain A Preface to Chaucer, which even his medievalist critics have assumed is correct, this paper argues that Augustine’s treatise justifies neither allegorical readings of pagan literature nor the writing of Christian poetry that imitates biblical obscurity. Instead, his interpretive theory hinges on the divine authorship of scripture, the only text lending itself to salvific interpretation and the sole basis for a community of exegetes, preachers, and their audience bound together by charity rather than being motivated by pride. Chaucer’s metaliterary statements in Troilus and Criseydeand the Canterbury Talesonly pretend to appropriate biblical poetics. Subverting themselves, they exemplify the perils of vying with scripture. Whereas the former work uses its disparity with the Bible to convey sublunary existence in form as well as contents, the latter finds a novel way to relate to God’s Word by reflexively dramatizing its interpretation.