Reconstructing the Pardoner: Transgender Skin Operations in Fragment VI.

Author / Editor
Bychowski, M. W.

Title
Reconstructing the Pardoner: Transgender Skin Operations in Fragment VI.

Published
In Nicole Nyffenegger and Katrin Rupp, eds. Writing on Skin in the Age of Chaucer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2918), pp. 221-49.

Description
Uses Judith Butler's transgender theory to read the skin of the Pardoner as an example of cooperative agency resulting in a reconstructed identity, in contrast to the surgically enforced violence of cutting off Virginia's head in PhyT in order to maintain her gender identity as a virgin. Claims that both virgins and castrates have their identities shaped through "the co-operation of a person's agency with associations written within and on their skin."

Alternative Title
Writing on Skin in the Age of Chaucer.

Chaucer Subjects
Pardoner and His Tale
Physician and His Tale