Diminishing Masculinity in Chaucer's 'Tale of Sir Thopas'

Author / Editor
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome.

Title
Diminishing Masculinity in Chaucer's 'Tale of Sir Thopas'

Published
Peter G. Beidler, ed. Masculinities in Chaucer: Approaches to Maleness in the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde (Cambridge; and Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 1998), pp. 143-55.

Description
One of the dominant themes of fragment 7 of CT is the "gendering of male bodies." The theme plays out through the shrinking masculinity ofThopas and the absence of menacing sexuality in his encounter with Olifaunt. It parallels the diminution of masculine threat in Chaucer's fictional accounts of rape and in the accusation of rape against Chaucer himself.

Alternative Title
Masculinities in Chaucer: Approaches to Maleness in the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde.

Chaucer Subjects
Tale of Sir Thopas.