Chaucer’ın Düşes’in Kitabı adlı Şiirinde Hastalık ve İyileşmeye Dair

Chaucer’ın rüya şiirleri, yazar olmak isteyen anlatıcının sorunlarının rüya yetkilileri tarafından çözülerek anlatıcının iyi bir yazar olmasına yardımcı olmaya çalışan iyileştirmeye yönelik anlatılardır. Aslında hastalık ve hastalığı iyileştirme yolları Chaucer’ın ilk rüya şiiri Düşes’in Kitabı şiirinin temel konusunu oluşturur. Düşesin Kitabı’nın durumunu uzun süredir devam eden bir hastalık olarak tanımlayan ve okuduğu üzüntülü ve acılı bir hikayede uykusuzluğuna çare arayan bir anlatıcısı vardır. Anlatıcının rüyası bir sevgilinin ölümü ve sağ kalan sevgilinin buna bağlı olarak çektiği acıyı anlatır. Kara Ölüm olarak adlandırılan vebada olduğu gibi sürekli bir hastalık hali sunan Düşes’in Ölümü şiiri hastalık ve hastalığın sebep olduğu çaresizlik durumu açısından yazımında rol alan Kara Ölüm’ü çağrıştırır. Şiir iyileşme ihtimalleri sunmakla birlikte bu ihtimallerin sorunlu ve gerçekleşmesi zor olduğunu da gösterir. Bu makale, Düşes’in Ölümü şiirinin iyileştirici özelliğini vurgulayan teselli edici özelliği yanı sıra, mevcut tedavi yöntemlerine dirençli bir hastalıkları olduğundan sağlıksız ve ölümle yüz yüze olan karakterleri yoluyla tedavi ihtimallerini zayıflatan bir hastalık temasını temel alıp geliştirdiğini savunur.

Anahtar Kelimeler:

Chaucer, Düşes’in kitabı, Rüya şiir, hastalık ve sağlık, veba

Speaking of Sickness and Healing in Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess

Chaucer’s dream poems are curative narratives which to a large extent engage with the narrator’s problems as an aspiring writer as problems to be remedied by the dream authorities so that the narrator can become a good writer. Indeed, the idea of a disease and possible ways of curing it are central to Chaucer's first dream narrative, the Book of the Duchess. The Book of the Duchess introduces a narrator who identifies his condition as a sickness of a long time and continues with a search for curative alternatives for his sleeplesness in a story of loss and grief. The narrator’s dream narrative presents a story of the death of a beloved and grief of the surviving partner. In its engagement with sickness and frustration caused by lack of healing prospects the Book of the Duchess echoes its originary occasion, the Black Death, as it represents a persistent state of sickness similar to the one caused by the Black Death. Although the possibilities of healing are there to be considered, they are problematic and difficult to realize. This paper argues that along with its consolatory dialectics that foregrounds the curative role of the poem, the Book of the Duchess develops and centralizes a poetics of sickness that undermines the possibilities of healing in its presentation of characters as unhealthy people facing death because of an illness resistant to existing forms of treatment.

Keywords:

Chaucer, Book of the Duchess, dream poetry, sickness and healing, Black Death,

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