Chaucer's Wolf: Exemplary Violence in The Physician's Tale

Author / Editor
Pitcher, John A.

Title
Chaucer's Wolf: Exemplary Violence in The Physician's Tale

Published
Genre 36: 1-27, 2003.

Description
Examines allegorical, typological, eschatological, and pathetic registers and word play in PhyT, showing how Chaucer thematizes violence and cultural forms that would valorize it. Pitcher compares Chaucer-s rendering with that in the "Roman de la Rose" and argues that the image of the wolf (ll. 101-2) applies to Virginius. Within the framework of CT, the Tale indicts the family as an institution of violence.

Chaucer Subjects
Physician and His Tale.
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations