Legends of Good Women in the European Middle Ages

Author / Editor
Meale, Carol M.

Title
Legends of Good Women in the European Middle Ages

Published
Archiv 229 (1992): 55-70.

Description
Chaucer's strategy in LGW and Christine de Pisan's in "Livre de la Cite des Dames" differ from Boccaccio's in "De claris mulieribus." Chaucer's parody of hagiography and Christine's efforts to encourage us to read as women promote a revisionist outlook, while Boccaccio's blunt exemplarism and submission to authority are misogynistic. Meale focuses on the authors' versions of the Medea account.

Chaucer Subjects
Legend of Good Women.
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations.