Women and Geoffrey Chaucer
- Author / Editor
- Murtaugh, Daniel M.
Women and Geoffrey Chaucer
- Published
- ELH 38 (1971): 473-92.
- Description
- Explores the complementary relations between two "fantasies" about women that underlie Chaucer's Marriage Group: clerkly abuse rooted in patristic tradition (particularly Jerome) and courtly idealization rooted in "fin amour" (especially Jean de Meun). Argues that, taken toegther, WBPT, ClT, MerT, and FranT evince Chaucer's insistence that human love must be free and that "women are the moral equals of men."
- Chaucer Subjects
- Wife of Bath and Her Tale
- Clerk and His Tale
- Merchant and His Tale
- Franklin and His Tale
- Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations