Medieval Venuses and Cupids: Sexuality, Hermeneutics, and English Prose
- Author / Editor
- Tinkle, Theresa.
Medieval Venuses and Cupids: Sexuality, Hermeneutics, and English Prose
- Published
- Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996.
- Physical Description
- xv, 294 pp.
- Description
- Mythographic tradition provided Chaucer and his contemporaries a wide variety of significations for the figures of Cupid and Venus. Tinkle surveys this variety from antiquity forward, showing that vernacular representations of Cupid and Venus derived complex meanings from such mythographic traditions as moralization, medicine, philosophy, astrology, and iconography.
- Depictions of Cupid and Venus by Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, James I, Boccaccio, and Christine de Pizan (among others) reflect medieval constructions of sexuality. Chaucer "shuns Cupid's deceits in favor of Venus's patronage," abandoning French models and constructing a less class-based, more "natural" order that set the English standard. Discussed at length are KnT, WBT, ParsT, HF, PF, and LGWP. Some attention is given to SqT and TC.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Background and General Criticism.
- Knight and His Tale.
- Wife of Bath and Her Tale.
- Parson and His Tale.
- House of Fame.
- Parliament of Fowls.
- Legend of Good Women.
- Squire and His Tale.
- Troilus and Criseyde.