The Wretched Constance: Defining a "Mens exili."
- Author / Editor
- Lee, J. Seth.
The Wretched Constance: Defining a "Mens exili."
- Published
- In The Discourse of Exile in Early Modern English Literature (New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 15-33.
- Description
- Treats Nicholas Trevet's, John Gower's, and Chaucer's tales of Constance as seriatim clarifications of "mens exili" (the mind of exile) in preparation for discussing relations between "exilic experience" and "national formation and nationalistic subjectivity" in early modern English literature. In MLT, Custance has less agency, is more "wrecched," and is more a marginalized "stranger" than Gower's character or Trevet's, but she is a more powerful figure of religious transformation--perhaps Chaucer's comment on Wycliffite heterodoxy.
- Alternative Title
- The Discourse of Exile in Early Modern English Literature.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Man of Law and His Tale
Sources, analogues, and Literary Relations