Rethinking Chaucer's "Legend of Good Women"

Author / Editor
Collette, Carolyn P.

Title
Rethinking Chaucer's "Legend of Good Women"

Published
Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2014.

Physical Description
xi, 168 pp.

Description
Examines LGW within the sociocultural and intellectual contexts of the late fourteenth century, paying especial attention to early humanist and late courtly traditions. LGWP may be juxtaposed with Richard de Bury's "Philobiblon"; and the legends themselves with Boccaccio's "Amorosa visione" and "De mulieribus claris," Christine de Pizan's "Cité des dames," Machaut's "Jugement dou roi de Navarre," and Gower's "Confessio Amantis." Aristotle's "Ethics" complicates LGW by imposing the notion of "the mean" upon the tales' excesses. Reads LGW as a mid-point on a continuum with TC and CT as the end-points, viewing LGW as a stylistic and thematic "palinode" vis-á-vis TC. Also, CT could be similarly construed in relation to LGW--for instance, in the comedic redactions of ClT and FranT.

Chaucer Subjects
Legend of Good Women
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
Troilus and Criseyde
Clerk and His Tale
Franklin and His Tale