Chaucer, Rape, and the Poetic Powers of Ventriloquism
- Author / Editor
- Evitt, Regula Meyer.
Chaucer, Rape, and the Poetic Powers of Ventriloquism
- Published
- Monica Brzezinski Potkay and Regula Meyer Evitt. Minding the Body: Woman and Literature in the Middle Ages, 800-1500 (London: Twayne, 1997), (Chapter 8) pp. 139-65.
- Description
- Himself accused of rape, Chaucer could inhabit the "role of masculine agent" of the crime and that of the "feminized victim of accusation," reworking the traditional "metaphoric equation of deceptive language and female infidelity."
- In "Adam," the narrator-author is "doubly gendered"; as text and textile, the story of Philomela in LGW is "doubly voiced." In WBT, the juxtaposition of rape and ventriloquism divides empathy for the victim and the "clement hope for the rapist's reform."
- Contributor
- Potkay, Monica Brzezinski.
- Alternative Title
- Minding the Body: Woman in Literature in the Middle Ages, 800-1500.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Background and General Criticism.
- Adam Scriveyn.
- Legend of Good Women.
- Wife of Bath and Her Tale.