The Play of Breath: Chaucer’s Narratives of Feeling

Abstract

This essay explores the treatment of breath and breathlessness in the imaginative fiction of Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer draws on medieval medical theories, rooted in classical thought, to portray the ways that motions of the vital spirit-closely connected with breathcreate powerful physical responses, which at their most extreme cause sighs and swoons. According to this pre-Cartesian world view, mind, body and affect are intimately connected. The movement of breath plays a key role in Chaucer's depiction of the experiences of emotion, particularly love and grief, and in his treatment of gender. This physiological emphasis creates narratives of feeling that are deeply embodied. The essay focuses on Chaucer's romance writing, in particular, The Book of the Duchess, Troilus and Criseyde and The Legend of Good Women. Keywords Breath • Swoon • Sigh • Vital spirits • Affect • Emotion • Body I am as confident as I am of anything that, in myself, the stream of thinking (which I recognize emphatically as a phenomenon) is only a careless name for what, when scrutinized, reveals itself to consist chiefly of the stream of my breathing. (William James, "Does Consciousness Exist?") 1 CHAPTER 2