Performing Polity: Women and Agency in the Anglo-French Tradition, 1385-1620

Author / Editor
Collette, Carolyn P.

Title
Performing Polity: Women and Agency in the Anglo-French Tradition, 1385-1620

Published
Turnhout, Belgium : Brepols, 2006.

Physical Description
218 pp.

Series
Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts, no. 15.

Description
Collette surveys literary and historical evidence that women in the Anglo-French tradition played the role of mediator, i.e., someone who "negotiates, bridges, and unites differences"--evidence of the "ideology and practice of women's agency" in the late Middle Ages and early modern period. Discusses works by Christine de Pizan, Philippe de Mézières, Nicolas Oresme, Lydgate, and Chaucer, plus several cycle plays, Griselda narratives, treatises on the Virgin, and accounts of Henry VIII's attempts to divorce Catherine of Aragon.

Chaucer Subjects
Clerk and His Tale.
Prioress and Her Tale.
Second Nun and Her Tale.