Cowen, Janet (M.)
Julia Boffey and Janet Cowen, eds. Chaucer and Fifteenth-Century Poetry. King's College London Medieval Studies, no. 5 (London: King's College Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, 1991), pp. 51-65.
Discusses exemplary use of Medea in classical and medieval traditions, suggesting connections with Boccaccio's De claris mulieribus and Christine de Pisan's Book of the City of Ladies. Also notes comparisons among LGW, Lydgate's versions of the…
Erler, Mary, and Maryanne Kowaleski, eds.
Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1988.
A collection of essays by various hands. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Women and Power in the Middle Ages under Alternative Title.
Pericard-Mea, Denise.
Juliette Dor and Marie-Élisabeth Henneau, eds. Femmes et pèlerinages / Women and Pilgrimages ([Santiago de Compostela]: Compostela Group of Universities, 2007), pp. 25-46.
Discusses female presence and company on pilgrimage routes, examining women's destinations and motivations compared to those of men.
Carroll, Virginia Schaefer.
Medieval Perspectives 3 (1988): 76-88.
MilT and RvT raise the issue of "maistrie" in relation to the economic stability of the family. Women are defined as passive, in terms that equate sexual loyalty and commercial value. Wives "quyte" (repay) their husbands through financial loss and…
Fisher, Sheila.
Roberta L. Krueger, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 150-64.
Argues that Chaucer, the Gawain poet, and Malory use women to define chivalric male identities. The texts of these authors register anxiety about women as "hominis confusio" and marginalize women by marginalizing many of the moments of their greatest…
Meale, Carol M, ed.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Eight essays on women, literacy, and power in medieval Britain, including discussion of Latin, Anglo-Norman, Welsh,and English materials. Topics include romances, literature for recluses, the social conditions of literacy, female access to literacy,…
Perfetti, Lisa Renée.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003.
Explores literary representations of women's laughter from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries and examines the contexts that shaped how women told jokes. The Wife of Bath's use of play coincides with Chaucer's own, dramatizing antifeminism as…
Explores the complementary relations between two "fantasies" about women that underlie Chaucer's Marriage Group: clerkly abuse rooted in patristic tradition (particularly Jerome) and courtly idealization rooted in "fin amour" (especially Jean de…
Pearman, Tory Vandeventer.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Theorizes how medieval medical and social discourses link the "categories of 'woman' and 'disabled,'" a linking anchored in the notion that women are defective men. Compares the notion of reproduction in MerT and "Dame Sirith"; punishment of women in…
La Farge, Catherine.
John Simons, ed. From Medieval to Medievalism (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992), pp. 69-81.
Emelye and Griselda represent humankind. Theseus and Walter are figures of Boethian Providence, figures who implicate its inscrutability if not its caprice. By obscuring the boundaries of literary genres, Chaucer challenges traditional social,…
Worsfold, Brian J., ed.
Lleida and Catalunya, Spain: Department of English and Linguistics, University of Lleida, 2005.
Thirteen essays by various authors, with an introduction by the editor and a preface by Tavengwa M. Nhongo. Literary topics include Chaucer and modern fiction and poetry. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Women Ageing Through…
Miliaras, Barbara.
Liana De Girolami Cheney, ed. Pre-Raphaelitism and Medievalism in the Arts (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 1992), pp. 193-218.
Surveys the influence of courtly love on Burne-Jones, arguing for the special influence of Chaucer. LGW and love poetry inspired early Burne-Jones; his painting "Laus Veneris" is linked to MercB. The lady in "An Idyl" suggests Emelye of KnT. Like…
In Wom Nob, Chaucer introduces a psychology of love new to English poetry that derives from Machaut's "'realist' scholastic psychology" and that parallels the works of "stilnovisti" such as Dante, Cavalcanti, and Guinizella.
Delany, Sheila.
Sheila Delany, Writing Woman: Women Writers and Women in Literature Medieval to Modern (New York: Schoken Books, 1983), pp. 36-46.
Chaucer individualized Trevet's "bluestocking heroine" to make Constance a mere "agglomeration of virtues"; emblem for men and women alike, Constance as Everywoman suffers with Christian passivity because suffering is the human condition; she is a…
Reads Constance in MLT as an "Everywoman" who represents humanity in relationship to an "arbitrary and inscrutable God." Several abrupt descents into "crudity" in the tale remind us not to regard Constance as real, and contrasts with her mothers in…
Blamires, Alcuin, ed. With Karen Pratt and C. W. Marx.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.
Documents the details and development of medieval generalizations about women, translating from biblical, classical, patristic, Latin, and vernacular works a wide variety of antifeminist and profeminist selections, each with a brief introduction. …
In Chaucer's England, the legal term "homicide" ("deliberate infliction of death," justified or not) was distinct from "murder," which carried negative moral connotations but had no legal definition. In CT, Chaucer uses the terms precisely and…
Kelly, Henry Ansgar.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History ser. 3, vol. 8 (2011): 81-195.
Surveys some 5,000 wills available at the Guildhall Court of Hustings, documenting that, even though the practice was formerly prohibited, property was regularly acquired by wives in late medieval London through the deaths of their husbands. Observes…
Eleazar, Edwin.
Laura C. Lambdin and Robert T. Lambdin, eds. Chaucer's Pilgrims: An Historical Guide to the Pilgrims in the "Canterbury Tales" (Westport, Conn.; and London: Greenwood, 1996), pp. 220-42.
Describes medieval medical education and explains the theory and practice of medieval physicians and surgeons as background to the GP sketch of the Physician. Some details of the sketch accord well with typical medieval medical activities, while…
Stallcup, Stephen.
Bonnie Wheeler, ed. Feminea Medievalia I: Representations of the Feminine in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Academia Press, 1993), pp. 43-68.
Examines Anelida's complaint in relation to the genre of amatory complaint, considering the role of gender in the genre. Anelida reclaims lyric space for herself by reworking the courtly, traditionally masculine form, balancing the illogic of…
Pigg, Daniel F.
Laura C. Lambdin and Robert T. Lambdin, eds. Chaucer's Pilgrims: An Historical Guide to the Pilgrims in the "Canterbury Tales". (Westport, Conn.; and London: Greenwood, 1996), pp. 263-70.
The GP sketch of the Plowman reflects the ambiguities of late-medieval attitudes toward labor. It depicts ideals of working-class spirituality and the social realities of agriculture.
Smith, Elton E.
Laura C. Lambdin and Robert T. Lambdin, eds. Chaucer's Pilgrims: An Historical Guide to the Pilgrims in the "Canterbury Tales" (Westport, Conn.; and London: Greenwood, 1996), pp. 314-23.
Briefly describes the history of confession and the granting of indulgences in church tradition. Also explicates details of PardPT.
