Rude Mechanicals and Minotaurs: Shakespeare and Chaucer Among the Mythographers

Author / Editor
Storm, Mel.

Title
Rude Mechanicals and Minotaurs: Shakespeare and Chaucer Among the Mythographers

Published
Enarratio 14 (2010, for 2007): 139-51.

Description
Storm surveys the debt to Chaucer's KnT in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," focusing on the works' mutual concern with hierarchy and order. In both works (and elsewhere in the authors' works), the figure of the Minotaur (parodied in Bottom's transformation) represents the counter principles of disruptive lust and chaos. Storm also comments on Pasiphae in WBP.

Chaucer Subjects
Knight and His Tale
Wife of Bath and Her Tale
Chaucer's Influence and Later Allusion