Practicing Women: The Matter of Women in Medieval English Literature

Author / Editor
Robertson, Elizabeth Ann.

Title
Practicing Women: The Matter of Women in Medieval English Literature

Published
Literature Compass 5.3 (2008): 505-28.

Description
Summarizes Aristotelian affiliations of women with matter (rather than form) and, following Bourdieu, explores how this affiliation and its "practices" are enacted in Middle English literature. Chaucer engages "contemporary historical practices about the law, marriage, and contemporary debates about preaching women" in WBT, MerT, and SNT.

Chaucer Subjects
Wife of Bath and Her Tale
Merchant and His Tale
Second Nun and Her Tale