Laboring in the God of Love's Garden: Chaucer's Prologue to The Legend of Good Women

Description: Describes Chaucer responsibilities as a justice of the peace from 1385 to 1389, particularly "the enforcement of highly controversial labor regulations," and explores how the "trope of poet as accused laborer" in LGWP suggests his concerns about such responsibilities. Seen in light of a charge of trespass brought against Matilda Nemeg, LGWP shows the poet forced to justify his labor as judicial defense; like the C-text of "Piers Plowman," LGWP contemplates intellectual labor, vernacularity, and the difficulties of trying to textualize identity.