The 'Canterbury Tales': Anxiety Release and Wish Fulfillment
- Author / Editor
- Rudat, Wolfgang E. H.
The 'Canterbury Tales': Anxiety Release and Wish Fulfillment
- Published
- American Imago 35 (1979): 407-18.
- Description
- The Canterbury pilgrimage is, among other things, an attempt by some of the pilgrims to sublimate the sex drive.
- The Merchant indirectly admits his sexual inadequacy (he is January); the Prioress her fear of the opposite sex (the little "clergeon's" murder is a form of castration); the Monk his desire to masturbate (God, after all, made Adam with his "owene fynger"); and the Pardoner his sexual fraudulence (he is a eunuch). Such confessions as these pilgrims make help to release their fears and anxieties.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Canterbury Tales--General.