Interesting topic, interesting responses. I doubt myself that most
humanists, esp. the northern ones, seriously believed in human
perfectibility. Protestants may be glummer about human nature than
humanists living in sunny Italy, but still. I'd send the student straight
to Erasmus' great (and to my mind subtle and delightful) Enchiridion, his
"Little handbook/handweapon" for the Christian pilgrim/knight. When I
first read it I was stunned by its relevance to Book I, not least the way
Erasmus describes how when learning not to be proud we can fall into other
forms of pride at not being proud. It and St. Bernard's little pilgrimage
allegory based on the prodigal son (a story structured by a wayfarer's
trip to error, to pride, to despair, to recovery in a nice building),
which lies behind a number of pilgrimage allegories seem to me between the
two of them to account for an awful lot of the underpinnings of Book I,
whatever the "debts," as we used to say, to Ariosto and Tasso. Anyway, the
little book by Erasmus should be easily found in the library in a modern
translation, although I forget the translators name at th moment. Anne
Prescott.
On Tue, 4 Apr 2000, David Wilson-Okamura wrote:
> At 12:06 PM 4/4/00 -0700, you wrote:
> >A student of mine is interested in writing on the relationship between Book
> >I and humanist pedagogy. I am certain there is material out there, but so
> >far I haven't been able to locate anything using the MLA Bibliography.
> >Could someone help with some basic references?
>
> The book's at home in the scrine, so I can't quote chapter and verse, but
> John Watkins argues, in _The Specter of Dido_, that FQ I offers a
> Protestant rebuttal to the humanist rhetoric of human perfectibility.
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> David Wilson-Okamura http://geoffreychaucer.org [log in to unmask]
> Macalester College Chaucer: An Annotated Guide to Online Resources
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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