The Gender of Song in Chaucer

Author / Editor
Zeeman, Nicolette.

Title
The Gender of Song in Chaucer

Published
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 29 (2007): 141-82.

Description
Male singers in Chaucer's works recurrently--perhaps inevitably--embody narcissism and receive "brutal," scatological punishment as a result of their deserved, comic victimhood. Psychoanalytic understanding of love as "affect" and of song as gender-bending underpins readings of Ros, MilT (both Nicholas and Absolon), MerT, the Pardoner, PrT, Th, ManT, NPT, and TC. Chaucer's depictions of male singing (and poetry?) may be phobic.

Chaucer Subjects
To Rosemounde.
Troilus and Criseyde.
Miller and His Tale.
Merchant and His Tale.
Pardoner and His Tale.
Prioress and Her Tale.
Tale of Sir Thopas.
Nun's Priest and His Tale.
Manciple and His Tale.