"O sweete and wel beloved spouse deere": A Pastoral Reading of Cecilia's Post-Nuptial Persuasion in "The Second Nun's Tale."

Author / Editor
Long, Mary Beth.

Title
"O sweete and wel beloved spouse deere": A Pastoral Reading of Cecilia's Post-Nuptial Persuasion in "The Second Nun's Tale."

Published
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 39 (2017): 159-89.

Description
Considers the shift in "social and rhetorical roles" of Cecilia in SNT--from sweet wife to ardent polemical martyr--and argues that both are consistent with views of female speech in pastoral literature, particularly confessional manuals and hagiography. These "speaking behaviors" are "wholly congruent" with the Second Nun as Benedictine nun and teller of SNT.

Chaucer Subjects
Second Nun and Her Tale
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations