The Naked Text: Chaucer's 'Legend of Good Women'

Author / Editor
Delany, Sheila.

Title
The Naked Text: Chaucer's 'Legend of Good Women'

Published
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.

Physical Description
xi, 259 pp.

Description
Analyzes LGW as an under-appreciated work, using an ecletic combination of approaches derived from semiotic, historicist, and feminist theories. LGWP and the separate legends are coherent but not organic; they combine in their recurrent Pauline/Augustinian orthodoxy and in their concerns with poetic language and such contemporary political topics as Lollardy and crusading.
Exploring issues of art, philosophy, and history, Delany compares LGW to works of Ovid, Boccaccio, and Christine de Pizan, emphasizing its sexual wordplay, Orientalism, and representations of gender and class.

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