Gendered Books: Reading, Space and Intimacy in Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde."

Author / Editor
Johnston, Andrew James.

Title
Gendered Books: Reading, Space and Intimacy in Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde."

Published
Andrew James Johnston, Russell West-Pavlov, and Elisabeth Kempf, eds. Love, History and Emotion in Chaucer and Shakespeare: "Troilus and Criseyde" and "Troilus and Cressida" (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), pp. 171-88.

Description
Investigates two crucial scenes of reading in TC--Criseyde's reading with her attendants in Book 2 and Pandarus's voyeuristic reading of a romance in the consummation scene--finding in their contrasts two opposed models of reading: one that "privileges hermeneutic activity" and the other that prefers "affective immersion." Setting ("paved parlour" versus bedchamber), the meanings of "romaunce," and the poem's "intense familiarity" with the story of Thebes complicate the gendered opposition of reading habits.

Alternative Title
Love, History and Emotion in Chaucer and Shakespeare

Chaucer Subjects
Troilus and Criseyde