Chaucer's Feminine Subjects: Figures of Desire in "The Canterbury Tales"

Author / Editor
Pitcher, John A.

Title
Chaucer's Feminine Subjects: Figures of Desire in "The Canterbury Tales"

Published
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Physical Description
xiv, 200 pp.

Series
The New Middle Ages

Description
Analyzes how Chaucer's rhetorical constructions decenter self-disclosure and resist simplistic notions of gender in WBPT, ClT, FranT, and PhyT. Figurative or allusive speech cannot adequately represent subjectivity and desire. Chaucer's treatments of the feminine subject are not univocal; however, his tales can both reinforce and undermine cultural and gender norms.

Chaucer Subjects
Wife of Bath and Her Tale
Clerk and His Tale
Franklin and His Tale
Physician and His Tale