Beauty and the East, a Modern Love Story: Women, Children, and Imagined Communities in The Man of Law's Tale and Its Others

Author / Editor
Heng, Geraldine.

Title
Beauty and the East, a Modern Love Story: Women, Children, and Imagined Communities in The Man of Law's Tale and Its Others

Published
Geraldine Heng. Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 181-237.

Description
Heng assesses MLT as an account of a "feminized crusade" that involves "sexual martyrdom" on the part of Custance and reveals the power of her "reproductive sexuality." The fusion of hagiography and romance in MLT is also evident in ClT, but while both Tales show how the "politics of emotion undergirds the nationalist imaginary," MLT also indicates how (as in "King of Tars") race challenges ideas of community.

Alternative Title
Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy

Chaucer Subjects
Man of Law and His Tale.
Clerk and His Tale.