Chaucer and the Seven Deadly Sins (Classic Reprint)

Book excerpt: Excerpt from Chaucer and the Seven Deadly Sins Vitry takes his stand upon Proverbs XXII, 6, Train up a child in the way he should go, etc. 23 Much more to our purpose is the close resemblance between many lines of the Physician's Tale and the well-known patristic tracts on Virginity. The moral traits of Virginia - her humil ity, her modesty of bearing and array, her abstinence from wine, her discretion in speech, her avoidance of society, her dislike of feasts and dances - areprecisely those pre scribed to the consecrated maiden in Ambrose's famous treatise, De Virginibus. Ambrose's presentation of the ideal of virginity and of the perils to which the lamb is subjected from wolves (cf. 0. T., C. 102) culminates, as in Chaucer, with a solemn warning to mothers and fathers (iii, vi).25 And the ten-line application at the close of the Tale (c'. 27 7 is the traditional end ing of an ensample of Sin. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.