Living Death in Medieval French and English Literature

Description: In the chapter "Becoming Woman in Chaucer: 'On ne naît pas femme, on le devient en mourant'," Gilbert reads BD and LGW through the lenses of Robert Hertz's and Jacques Lacan's theories, respectively. BD represents a response to death that follows a Hertzian anthropological pattern; the Duchess is first mourned and then transmuted from a singular woman whose death has disrupted the social order into a socio-politically acceptable archetype in service of that order. In contrast, Alceste in LGW exists in a liminal "entre-deux-morts" that allows for opposition to the "masculinist cycle of normal life and consummated death."