Chaucer's Body Politic : Social and Narrative Self-Regulation

Author / Editor
Wallace, David.

Title
Chaucer's Body Politic : Social and Narrative Self-Regulation

Published
Exemplaria 2 (1990): 221-40.

Description
Medieval texts and medieval societies imagine themselves self-regulated through structures essential to both social formation and destruction.
An examination of WBT, FrT, and SumT in light of similar narratives from Dante and Boccaccio suggests that gender differences brackets all such narratives, while allegorical figures, social hierarchies, linguistic strictures, and social and professional antagonisms are figures for self-regulation that may in turn be destructive of the very social and textual narratives they constitute.

Chaucer Subjects
Canterbury Tales--General.
Wife of Bath and Her Tale.
Friar and His Tale.
Summoner and His Tale.