Alisoun's Language: Body, Text, and Glossing in Chaucer's 'The Miller's Tale'

Author / Editor
Donaldson, Kara Virginia.

Title
Alisoun's Language: Body, Text, and Glossing in Chaucer's 'The Miller's Tale'

Published
Philological Quarterly 71 (1992): 139-53.

Description
Absolon appropriates the language of courtly love, thereby rendering himself deaf to Alisoun's realistic language and setting himself up as a glossator of Alisoun's body/text. When Alisoun disrupts his gloss by exposing "hir hole" (i.e., her sexuality), Absolon turns to violence in an attempt to reclaim her body as a text he can control.

Chaucer Subjects
Miller and His Tale.