Chaucer and the Cultures of Love and Marriage

Description: Reads CT, TC, and LGW in the context of late medieval courtesy books, advice literature, and epistolary collections. Considers public and private marital honor in the Paston letters and FranT, and wifely obedience in ClT, "Menagier de Paris," and "Livre de la vertu du sacrement de mariage." ShT illustrates the limits of women's economic power often suggested by the Paston, Stonor, and Plumpton correspondence, and MerT suggests the possibility of rebellion against advice literature. MLT goes beyond the conduct books to recommend female acceptance of marital unhappiness. KnT presents a pragmatic notion of marriage for the greater sociopolitical good. TC, "The Book of the Knight of the Tower," and Christine de Pizan's "Livre des trois vertus" question courtly ideals, and LGW dramatizes its heroines' quasi-comic misapplications of advice literature.

Chaucer Subjects: Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations; Troilus and Criseyde; Legend of Good Women; Franklin and His Tale; Clerk and His Tale; Shipman and His Tale; Merchant and His Tale; Man of Law and His Tale; Knight and His Tale