Rhetoric and Performing Anger: Proserpina's Gift and Chaucer's "Merchant's Tale."

Author / Editor
Turner, Joseph.

Title
Rhetoric and Performing Anger: Proserpina's Gift and Chaucer's "Merchant's Tale."

Published
Rhetorica 34 (2016): 427-54.

Description
Argues that Proserpina's angry response to Pluto in MerT (4.2264–70) "highlights the historical relationship between Chaucer's depiction of women's speech, medieval grammatical [classroom] instruction, and theories of delivery" that derive from Geoffrey of Vinsauf 's "Poetria nova." Considers the role of angry speech in "leveling the playing field between men and women" in MerT and in WBP, and calls for revived interest in studying literature in relation to rhetoric.

Chaucer Subjects
Merchant and His Tale
Wife of Bath and Her Tale
Language and Word Studies
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations