Chaucer and the Fictions of Gender
- Author / Editor
- Hansen, Elaine Tuttle.
Chaucer and the Fictions of Gender
- Published
- Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
- Physical Description
- ix, 301 pp.
- Description
- Explores the relationship between gender and subjectivity in the works of Chaucer, assessing from a feminist critical perspective the traditional "adulation" of the poet. Hansen examines the "feminization" of Chaucer's characters and narrators and demonstrates that various characters are depicted as readers or misreaders.
- BD is shaped by the absence of the central female figure, Blanche. The treatment of Geoffrey and Dido in HF reflects distrust of authority. PF challenges assumptions about heteterosexual desire. TC presents the instability of gender through its narrator and major characters. KnT, MilT, MerT, and FranT reveal their speakers' anxieties about gender, while the self-effacement of ClT pointedly avoids this issue.
- WBP raises questions about the presence and absence of female perspective.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Background and General Criticism.
- Wife of Bath and Her Tale.
- Book of the Duchess.
- House of Fame.
- Parliament of Fowls.
- Troilus and Criseyde.
- Clerk and His Tale.