From the Crusading Virago to the Polysemous Virgin: Chaucer's Constance

Author / Editor
Dor, Juliette.

Title
From the Crusading Virago to the Polysemous Virgin: Chaucer's Constance

Published
Juliette Dor, ed. A Wyf Ther Was: Essays in Honour of Paule Mertens-Fonck (Liege: University of Liege, 1992), pp. 129-40.

Description
Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of polyphony illuminates MLH, MLP, and MLT, in which Custance's religious voice contrasts with the Man of Law's many ambivalent voices, including his "rhetorical, epic, and legal registers." While Custance is a stock figure, the "basic scepticism of a dialogic tale" causes her to become an individual.

Alternative Title
Wyf Ther Was.

Chaucer Subjects
Man of Law and His Tale.