Birth Passages: Maternity and Nostalgia, Antiquity to Shakespeare

Author / Editor
Krier, Theresa M.

Title
Birth Passages: Maternity and Nostalgia, Antiquity to Shakespeare

Published
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001.

Physical Description
xvii, 266 pp.

Description
Treats Chaucer's topoi of bird song, maternal goddess Nature, voice, mother tongue, and biblical gardens in PF. Argues that the movement from aggressive plot to lyric in the poem and its male protagonist's oblique approach to the maternal draw the reader into an ethical stance of welcoming natality, the mother's otherness, and the pleasures of maternal sound. Compares Chaucer's treatment to works by Spenser and Shakespeare.

Chaucer Subjects
Parliament of Fowls.