The Prioress as Pearly Queen

Author / Editor
Moorman, Charles.

Title
The Prioress as Pearly Queen

Published
Chaucer Review 13 (1978): 25-33.

Description
The Prioress is neither aristocratic, as Bowden, Manly, and Robinson argue, nor classless as Sister Madeleva posits, but a proto-Cockney and, thus, a typically round, contradictory Chaucerian character. With East London associations and dialect (her French smacks of Stratford-atte-Bowe) she may only "'countrefete' cheere/Of court."

Chaucer Subjects
Prioress and Her Tale.
General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.