Shawn Normandin is Associate Professor of English at Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea. 

CONTENTS

1. Introduction: Chaucer and Ecopoetics

1.1 Anthropocentrism, Anthropotropism, Inscription

1.2 Ecopoetics and Ecoaesthetics

1.3 The Ecopoetics of the General Prologue

1. Ecophobia and the Knight's Tale

2.1 Dark Imagining: Ekphrasis and Allegory

2.2 Getting Green: Wordplay in the Knight's Tale

1. Nocturnal Ecologies: Metaphor in the Miller's and the Reeve's Tale

3.1 Metaphor in the Miller's Tale

3.2 Metaphor in the Reeve's Tale

4. Iterability, Anthropocentrism, and the Franklin's Tale

4.1 Iterability and Rejection

4.2 Improper Literalisms

4.3 Avenging the Rocks

5.1 Allegorizing Virgin Nature

5.2 Allegory versus History

5.3 Inhuman Poetics

6. Ruminating on and in the Monk's Tale

6.2 Reading like a Monk

6.3 Rereading the Monk's Tale

Index

Chaucerian Ecopoetics performs ecocritical close readings of Geoffrey Chaucer's poetry. Shawn Normandin explains how Chaucer's language demystifies the aesthetic charm of his narratives and calls into question the anthropocentrism they often depict. This text combines ecocriticism with reading techniques associated with deconstruction, to provide innovative interpretations of the General Prologue, the Knight's Tale, the Miller's Tale, the Reeve's Tale, the Franklin's Tale, the Physician's Tale, and the Monk's Tale. In stressing the importance of rhetorical nuance and literary form, Chaucerian Ecopoetics enables readers to better understand the ideological prehistory of today's environmental crisis.