Irony and the Antifeminist Narrator in Chaucer's 'Legend of Good Women'

Author / Editor
Hansen, Elaine Tuttle.

Title
Irony and the Antifeminist Narrator in Chaucer's 'Legend of Good Women'

Published
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 82 (1983): 11-31.

Description
LGW satirizes the narrator's perspective on women rather than examining feminine virtue. Obvious distortions of the legends reveal the deficiency of the narrator's attitude: he idealizes women in passivity, irrationality, and stupidity.
Not unfinished, LGW concludes aptly with Hypermnestra "sittynge in hire drede."

Chaucer Subjects
Legend of Good Women.