De casibus history, particularly when applied seriatim to “modern instances,” is not designed to give a life its full measure of recognition. It is intent, rather, on reiterating the fatal gesture that brought that life suddenly to an end. Its affective power is achieved, through what it assumes in but conceals from its audience: familiarity, extending to intimate acquaintance, with the “mighty man” who is wheeled in only to be brought down. The Knight’s cry of “Hoo!” and his plea for “namoore of this” testifies to the potential of the genre’s affective power as well as to its remorseless monotony. (318-9)

But de casibus, like any other ideological construct, is a form through which the world is hermeneutically and emotionally engaged, not a passive receptacle for predigested experience. (328)

From David Wallace, Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms in England and Italy (Stanford, 1997)