The Idea of Vacuity in Chaucer's Works

In the Middle Ages, Aristotelian influence helped shape an image of the universe that was defined by a sense of ‘fullness’. Of all the teachings of ‘The Philosopher’, perhaps the most famous was that a void space could not exist within the structure of the cosmos. Because of the scale of Aristotle’s influence throughout the later Middle Ages, the modern critical perspective has implicitly deemed that medieval literature, like medieval nature, does not much interact with void space. In examining the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, this study begins to readdress that understanding. The study offered here concerns the laconic moments an audience encounters when reading Chaucer’s work. Whilst this examination concerns gaps, absences and ciphers, it also concerns moments of generation and creation. The phrase horror vacui might have begun to emerge in the fourteenth century, but the notion of the void aroused responses a great deal more varied, and more complex, than fear alone. Aristotle might well have denied the possibility of a void, but medieval theologians were deeply concerned with contemporary philosophy’s suggestion that God would be incapable of producing one. The ensuing discourse between Christian doctrine and ancient logic helped define the shape of theology and philosophy in Chaucer’s time. The idea of the void became intricately tied up with God’s power, and, simultaneously, with the mind’s capacity to imagine counterfactual realities. Using the philosophical currents of the 14th century as a guide, this study explores how a contemporary understanding of vacuity arises and is utilised in Chaucer’s works. When the emergence of vacuity is understood as a kind of textual device, a reader is offered the opportunity to re-examine the essential subjects of Chaucer’s texts. Moving well beyond the idea of terror, this study explores themes of death, desire, time and the very concept of poetry itself. Moments where the idea of vacuity arises are moments of profound interiority: because nature abhors a vacuum, suggestions of empty space indicate that a text is working through an inflection of a character’s mind. In other words, when emptiness comes to the fore, Chaucer’s texts explore the very deepest mechanisms of human experience. Two things, in the fourteenth century, were capable of ‘forming’ a void: God and the human mind. As God creates reality, the human mind creates fantasy. Voids, in Chaucer’s works, are proof of the extreme power of the mind: their arrival in his works demarcates a profound questioning of humanity’s capacity to participate in a single, shared reality.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Loveday, Patrick

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Tasioulas, Jacqueline

• Chaucer
• Late Medieval Science
• Late Medieval Theology

Licence

• https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/cf48c443-9da3-4093-9aa1-a7f932673ddc/download
• http://purl.org/NET/rdflicense/allrightsreserved

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.116000

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/380030