A reasonable sympathy with conventionalism requires our understanding that the experience of the idealizing imagination is no less varied than that of realistic observation, and no less true. If the themes of most of Chaucer's conventional poems seem to converge toward the single point of recognizing supernal values in human affairs, the nature of the pointing differs with each poem. We do not read Chaucer, after all, for his philosophical conclusions, but for his workings-out, his poetry. Similarly, if tradition seems to codify Chaucer's poetry according to a fixed number of general forms in a defined area of style, the particular structure and local style of each poem are unique.
Chaucer's conventionalism should neither be dismissed nor taken for granted. The criticism of the Knight's Tale has long suffered from both of these errors.20 The trouble has been in the kinds of assumptions brought to the poem, in an attention to its poor dramatics rather than its rich symbolism, to......
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