Conquering the Reign of Femeny: Gender and Genre in Chaucer's Romances
- Author / Editor
- Weisl, Angela Jane.
Conquering the Reign of Femeny: Gender and Genre in Chaucer's Romances
- Published
- Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1995.
- Physical Description
- ix, 133 pp.
- Series
- Chaucer Studies, no. 22
- Description
- Explores the relation of gender and the genre of romance in Chaucer's CT, especially the mutually defining and delimiting power of the two categories. Women conform to the particular roles romance carves out for them, while the genre is simultaneously limited by these restricted female roles. Defined by a uniquely "vague set of generic criteria," romance mimes the position of women in the romances themselves. Chaucer questions the role and position of women and tests the limits of romance, a form that appears to be coterminous with femininity itself.
- Weisl considers TC, KnT, and SqT, Th, and FranT and WBT, comparing them with their sources and analogues to demonstrate Chaucer's understanding of romance and his critique of its limitations.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Background and General Criticism.
- Troilus and Criseyde.
- Knight and His Tale.
- Squire and His Tale.
- Tale of Sir Thopas.
- Franklin and His Tale.
- Wife of Bath and Her Tale.