ABSTRACT
The Book of the Duchess is the first of Chaucer's dream visions. In it the narrator, having fallen asleep, encounters a knight of high rank with whom he converses, and their discourse takes up most of the narrative. The poem is developed around the theme of the hunting of the 'hart', which Chaucer uses as a metaphor for pursuing what is contained in the heart of the Black Knight; 1 a figure who turns out to share, in more extreme form, the symptoms of melancholy which the narrator initially exhibits. In this chapter I shall show how Chaucer presents the negative influence of certain texts upon the mind of the Black Knight. Also I shall consider those protocols of courtliness that facilitate communication between individuals otherwise divided by rank, demonstrating how these protocols are treated positively in the poem. Part one of this chapter is concerned with the narrator, his reading and the courtly conventions governing his discourse with the Black Knight. The second part is a detailed analysis of the structure of the poem and how this enables the Black Knight's language, as well as the French literature of fin amor that makes up much of its substance, to be critically evaluated.
