Alceste the Washerwoman
- Author / Editor
- Higgins, Anne.
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.