Natural Feeling and Unnatural Mothers: Herod the Great, 'The Life of Saint Bridget,' and Chaucer's 'Clerk's Tale'

Author / Editor
Krug, Rebecca.

Title
Natural Feeling and Unnatural Mothers: Herod the Great, 'The Life of Saint Bridget,' and Chaucer's 'Clerk's Tale'

Published
Jane Tolmie and M. J. Toswell, eds. Laments for the Lost in Medieval Literature (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2010), pp. 225-41.

Description
Explores the depictions of grief over lost children in the Wakefield mystery play "Slaughter of the Innocents"; a Middle English life of Saint Bridget; and ClT. The depictions present grief as variously natural, unnatural, and a response to conflict; however, grief transforms the mother figure in each work.

Alternative Title
Laments for the Lost in Medieval Literature.

Chaucer Subjects
Clerk and His Tale.
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations