"All These Relationships between Women": Chaucer and the Bechdel Test for Female Friendship.

Author / Editor
Lochrie, Karma.

Title
"All These Relationships between Women": Chaucer and the Bechdel Test for Female Friendship.

Published
Karma Lochrie and Usha Vishnuvajjala, eds. Women’s Friendship in Medieval Literature (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2022), pp. 177-96.

Description
Identifies three ways to illuminate female friendship in CT, disclosing "identity of feeling" among women (Custance, the Sultaness, and Hermengild in MLT), "enclaves . . . afforded by misogynistic discourses" (the Wife, her gossip, and female community in WBPT), and "surprises and resistances . . . possible in the mise-en-scène of female empathy" (Canacee and the falcon in SqT). Considers criteria of female friendship posed by Virginia Woolf and film-critic Alison Bechdel

Alternative Title
Women’s Friendship in Medieval Literature

Chaucer Subjects
Canterbury Tales--General
Man of Law and His Tale
Wife of Bath and Her Tale
Squire and His Tale