Foucalt, Ovid and Chaucer

"The second theme, writing's relationship with the death, is even more familiar. This link subverts an old tradition exemplified by the Greek Epic, which was intended to perpetuate the immortality of the hero: if he was willing to die young it was so that his life, consecrated and magnified by death, might pass into immortality; the narrative then redeemed this accepted death." (Foucalt 102)

After reading Ovid's tale of Alcyone and Ceyx  and their ascension into the skies I was brought back to the link that Foucalt refers to and how Chaucer subverts it.  Ovid's conversion of the couple to birds clearly means to procure the immortality that Foucalt speaks of in this passage for "still do they mate and rear their young." (Ovid 745) Chaucer's Ceyx suffers a much crueler fate. In Chaucer's telling Ceyx dies three days after her husbands body has been reanimated. I found this subversion ( as Foucalt would call it) to be interesting as it shows Chaucer's use of pastiche and progression. Chaucer de-emphasizes the importance of immortality and presents death as the more heroic end to unrequited love.  Foucalt mentions the shift from immortality to death, but offers no explantation for the shift, stating only that philosophers have long ago made this connection.  But indeed this moment of Ceyx death does show the reader that this shift has in fact been made.  I suppose that this shift is made in part due to the influence of Christianity and it's view of death as a portal to a better life.  Yet while I find that this supposition of Christian influence is effective, it is slightly weakened by the use of a Greek myth involving Gods.