Lucrece's 'Myght': Rhetorical/Sexual Potency and Potentiality in Geoffrey Chaucer's Legend of Lucrece
- Author / Editor
- Aloni, Gila.
Lucrece's 'Myght': Rhetorical/Sexual Potency and Potentiality in Geoffrey Chaucer's Legend of Lucrece
- Published
- Rhetoric Society Quarterly 29.3: 31-43, 1999.
- Description
- Argues that in the LGW account of Lucrece (a tale of enforced copulation), Chaucer uses the word "myght" as a noun, a verb, and a copula to suggest the ultimate triumph of the heroine's seductive rhetoric. The story is less about rape than about women's rhetorical power; it is about Tarquinius's failure as a rhetorician, for which he tries to compensate (but cannot) with physical "myght."
- Chaucer Subjects
- Legend of Good Women.