"Countrefete Cheere": Kitsch, Taste, and The Prioress's Tale. (2nd January 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Dominick, Gina A.
• Is Part Of: Exemplaria. Volume 31:Number 1(2019)
• Page Start: 1
• Page End: 21
• Publication Date: 2019-01-02
• Subjects: Geoffrey Chaucer -- The Prioress's Tale -- "countrefete cheere" -- kitsch -- Saul Friedländer -- Theodor W. Adorno -- Nazism; European literature -- Renaissance, 1450-1600 -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Literature, Medieval -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Middle Ages -- Periodicals; 809.0205
• DOI: 10.1080/10412573.2019.1555245
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1041-2573

Abstract

ABSTRACT: With her particular and prim manners, extreme sentimentality, religious fanaticism, and highly stylized poetics, Chaucer's Prioress exemplifies many of the aesthetic, ideological, and contextual ambivalences of kitsch. In this article, I enable the critical language of kitsch from theorist Theodor W. Adorno's Aesthetic Theory (published in 1970) and the paradox presented in the Nazis' "Anti-Kitsch Law" to present a new framework for understanding the complexities of Chaucer's The Prioress's Tale . Kitsch, I argue, disrupts rather than sustains the text's aesthetic appeal to religious sensibility and communal affirmation. In the process, the Tale raises aesthetic and ethical questions regarding the ideology of forms that aestheticize or "harmonize" ugliness, especially death.