Inserting 'A grete tente, a thrifty, and a long': Sexual Obscenity and Scribal Innovation in Fifteenth-Century Manuscripts of 'The Canterbury Tales'
- Author / Editor
- Harris, Carissa M.
Inserting 'A grete tente, a thrifty, and a long': Sexual Obscenity and Scribal Innovation in Fifteenth-Century Manuscripts of 'The Canterbury Tales'
- Published
- Essays in Medieval Studies 27 (2011): 45-60.
- Description
- Examines fifteenth-century scribal responses to sexual language in the CT, noting that some manuscripts either replaced obscenities or added to sexual language. Observing that female narrators in the CT are restricted in their use of vernacular sexual language, Harris argues that the fifteenth-century revisions, such as those found in Oxford, New College, MS D. 314, allow these speakers a fuller use of sexual obscenity, thus "privileging female sexual subjectivity and mutual erotic pleasure."
- Chaucer Subjects
- Manuscripts and Textual Studies
- Canterbury Tales--General
- Language and Word Studies