The Logic of Love in the Canterbury Tales

Review
"Authoritative, magisterial, and refreshingly original, Manish Sharma’s The Logic of Love in The Canterbury Tales is destined to be recognized as one of the most important studies in its field. Energized by theoretical re-readings of late medieval philosophical sophisms and paradoxes, Sharma’s book demonstrates how signature aspects of Chaucer’s craft are sophisticated manoeuvres that are logical and meta-poetical in equal measure. This is a book that should be required reading in every graduate course on medieval literature and medieval literary criticism." -- Peter W. Travis, Professor Emeritus of English, Dartmouth College
"The Logic of Love in The Canterbury Tales is carefully crafted, and demonstrates an astonishing level of nuance across a diverse body of narratives. Manish Sharma communicates a complex problematic in simple terms and elucidates the astonishing degree to which Chaucer deals so consistently in paradoxes. This book is smart, original, and powerfully intelligent." -- Wesley Chihyung Yu, Associate Professor of English, Mount Holyoke College
"This book represents an essential contribution to the study of The Canterbury Tales. Its stance toward the poem is exemplary, its general implications substantial, its local interventions salutary. This is the way to read Chaucer." -- Jordan Kirk, Associate Professor of English, Pomona College
The Logic of Love in The Canterbury Tales argues that Geoffrey Chaucer’s magnum opus draws inventively on the resources of late medieval logic to conceive of love as an "insoluble." Philosophers of the fourteenth century expended great effort to solve insolubilia, like the notorious Liar paradox, in order to decide upon their truth or falsity. For Chaucer, however, and in keeping with Christ’s admonition from the Sermon on the Mount, the lover does not judge – does not decide on – the beloved.
Through a series of detailed and rigorously "non-judgmental" readings, Manish Sharma provides new insight into each of the prologues and tales and intervenes into scholarly debates about their collective import. In so doing, The Logic of Love in The Canterbury Tales deploys Chaucer’s understanding of charity to consider the limitations of modern critical approaches to The Canterbury Tales, including deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and gender theory. In the course of the analysis, Sharma shows not only how love and medieval philosophy together inform Chaucerian composition, but also how Chaucer could serve as a resource for contemporary theoretical reflections on love and ethics.