Alceste the Washerwoman

Author / Editor
Higgins, Anne.

Title
Alceste the Washerwoman

Published
Teresa Tavormina and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Endless Knot: Essays on Old and Middle English in Honor of Marie Borroff (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1995), pp. 113-27.

Description
One key to recognizing the parody of hagiography in LGW is the identification of Alceste as Alice de Cestre in LGWP.
Alice was a washerwoman of the royal household--perhaps a prostitute--and the double identity of Alceste-Alice establishes a "flexible morality" for the poem, "a model of moral relativism and tolerance."

Alternative Title
The Endless Knot: Essays on Old and Middle English in Honor of Marie Borroff.

Chaucer Subjects
Legend of Good Women.