'Unwemmed Custance': Circulation, Property, and Incest in the 'Man of Law's Tale'

Author / Editor
Shoaf, R[ichard] A[llen].

Title
'Unwemmed Custance': Circulation, Property, and Incest in the 'Man of Law's Tale'

Published
Exemplaria 2 (1990): 287-302.

Description
Chaucer explores the "citation and corruption of media" in MLT by having the lawyer tell a tale of "pseudo-circulation" in which Custance remains constant despite her apparent circulation and use. The tale enacts the Man of Law's anxieties about change, narrative, and the "finitude" of writing, while at the same time it reflects Chaucer's anxieties about endings and his own position, vis-a-vis Gower, as "a poet of fragments."

Chaucer Subjects
Man of Law and His Tale.