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Proverbial Wisdom and the Pursuit of Knowledge in the Squire’s Tale

abstract:Chaucer was deeply interested in questions surrounding knowledge. He confronts the problem of knowledge in the Squire’s Tale by examining various types of knowledge, epistemologies, the limits of knowledge, and curiosity. I argue that Chaucer offers a particular tool to approach this problem: proverbs. In the tale, the embedded microgenre of proverbs shows the value of traditionality and communal knowledge and regulates people’s behavior. Guiding readers through a process of moral education to evaluate true and false knowledge, proverbs support the tale’s argument for pursuing true knowledge grounded in traditional wisdom, while rejecting illicit curiosity and novelty. My examination engages challenging, informative, and diverse material that is widely integrated into Chaucer’s works. Given the ubiquitous popularity of proverbs across social classes and their adaptability to a wide range of contexts, this microgenre reveals concerns and interests of fourteenth-century readers, and other aspects of medieval culture, that might otherwise remain hidden.