The Rhetorical Construction of Narrator and Narrative in Chaucer's the "Book of the Duchess"

Bahr argues that although the psychological drama of character often seems to dominate Geoffrey Chaucer's poem, "Book of the Duchess," this drama depends critically upon an underlying, structural drama--that of the chiastic pattern of contrasting rhetorical styles that links the tale of Alcyone with the denouement of the central dialogue.