Intersex and the Pardoner's Body.

Published: Accessus: A Journal of Premodern Literature and New Media 4.1 (2017): 1-63.

Description: Interprets the Pardoner as an intersex person, taking his sexuality literally rather than figuratively, a matter of variation rather than lack. Clarifies these concepts in the history of science and the history of Chaucer criticism, and compares the Pardoner, Death, and the Old Man of PardT with the family of Sin and Death in John Gower's "Mirour de l'omme." Includes concern with teaching PardPT, its motifs of shame and castration, modern-day intersexuality, and the term "hermaphrodite."

Chaucer Subjects: Pardoner and His Tale
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations