Diana's 'Bowe Ybroke' : Impotence, Desire, and Virginity in Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls
- Author / Editor
- Lynch, Kathryn L.
Diana's 'Bowe Ybroke' : Impotence, Desire, and Virginity in Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls
- Published
- Kathleen Coyne Kelly and Marin Leslie, eds. Menacing Virgins: Representing Virginity in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Newark: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses), 1999, pp. 83-96.
- Description
- PF represents an "oedipal moment"--a psychological suspension between the "male-dominated civilization of Africanus ('culture,' in a word)" and the "female-dominated love-garden of Nature and Venus ('nature')." The narrator stands "on the brink of commitment," fearing that full "adult masculine sexuality" may return him to "pre-oedipal unity with the mother." Obliquely, the poem suggests the need for emphasis on the "feminine and maternal in human psycho-sexual development."
- Contributor
- Kelly, Kathleen Coyne, ed.
- Leslie, Marin, ed.
- Alternative Title
- Menacing Virgins: Representing Virginity in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Parliament of Fowls.