Chaste Marriage: Fashion and Texts at the Court of Richard II

Author / Editor
Bowers, John M.

Title
Chaste Marriage: Fashion and Texts at the Court of Richard II

Published
Pacific Coast Philology 30 (1995): 15-26.

Description
Chaucer exposes the Ricardian practice of chaste marriage "for what perhaps it really was: sexual hypocrisy posing as virtuous Christian abstinence." The false romantic passion and comic fusion of the clerkly and courtly in male characters such as Absolon in MilT and the Pardoner in PardT undercut such hypocrisy.

Chaucer Subjects
Background and General Criticism.
Miller and His Tale.
Pardoner and His Tale.