Plotting Motherhood in Medieval, Early Modern, and Modern Literature.

Author / Editor
Rose, Mary Beth.

Title
Plotting Motherhood in Medieval, Early Modern, and Modern Literature.

Published
Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.

Physical Description
xiii, 192 pp.; illus.

Description
Assesses "maternal authority" in literary works from Augustine's "Confessions" to Tony Kushner's "Angels in America," including a chapter entitled "Maternal Abandonment, Maternal Deprivation: Tales of Griselda in Boccaccio, Petrarch, Chaucer, and Shakespeare" (pp. 43-71) that focuses on motherhood (rather than wifehood) and on the ways in which Griselda's obedience to Walter is "belied" by triple "assertions of her individual will in relation to her children"--responses to his "attacks" on maternal authority and aligned with concerns about legitimacy and fidelity. Treats Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale" in similar terms.

Alternative Title
Maternal Abandonment, Maternal Deprivation: Tales of Griselda in Boccaccio, Petrarch, Chaucer, and Shakespeare.

Chaucer Subjects
Clerk and His Tale
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations