'He nedes moot unto the pley assente': Queer Fidelities and Contractual Hermaphroditism in Chaucer's Clerk's Tale
- Author / Editor
- Pugh, Tison.
'He nedes moot unto the pley assente': Queer Fidelities and Contractual Hermaphroditism in Chaucer's Clerk's Tale
- Published
- Sexuality and Its Queer Discontents in Middle English Literature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 75-99.
- Description
- The Clerk's submission to the Host's tale-telling game parallels Griselda's submission to Walter: the two are queerly faithful in ways that bring into focus their "contractual hermaphroditism" and deconstruct traditional gender categories. Griselda's fidelity reconstructs Walter's masculinity; the Clerk compels from his audience a "dissolution of gender" for the remainder of CT. Readers find queer pleasure despite the cruelty of the Tale.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Clerk and His Tale