This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1992.
Chaucer s Pardoner and Gender Theory, the first book-length treatment of the character, examines the Pardoner in Chaucer s Canterbury Tales from the perspective of both medieval and twentieth-century theories of sex, gender, and erotic practice. Sturges argues for a discontinuous, fragmentary reading of this character and his tale that is genuinely both premodern and postmodern. Drawing on theorists ranging from St. Augustine and Alain de Lille to Judith Butler and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Sturges approaches the Pardoner as a representative of the construction of historical - and sexual - identities in a variety of historically specific discourses, and argues that medieval understandings of gender remain sedimented in postmodern discourse.
This volume presents a feminist approach to the Canterbury Tales, investigating the ways in which the tensions and contradictions found within the broad contours of medieval gender discourse write themselves into Chaucer's text. Four discourses of medieval masculinity are examined, which simultaneously reinforce and resist one another: heroic or chivalric, Christian, courtly love, and emerging humanist models. Each chapter attempts to negotiate both contemporary assumptions of gender construction, and essentialist readings of gender common to the middle ages; throughout, the author argues that the Canterbury Tales offer a sophisticated discussion of masculinity, and that it strongly indicts some of the prevalent medieval notions of ideal masculinity while still remaining firmly homosocial and homophobic. The book concludes that on the question of gender issues, the Tales are best studied as male-authored texts containing representations and negotiations revealing much about late medieval masculinities. Dr ANNE LASKAYA teaches in the English Department at the University of Oregon.
"More than any other canonical English writer, Geoffrey Chaucer lived and worked at the centre of political life--yet his poems are anything but conventional. Edgy, complicated, and often dark, they reflect a conflicted world, and their astonishing diversity and innovative language earned Chaucer renown as the father of English literature. Marion Turner, however, reveals him as a great European writer and thinker. To understand his accomplishment, she reconstructs in unprecedented detail the cosmopolitan world of Chaucer's adventurous life, focusing on the places and spaces that fired his imagination. Uncovering important new information about Chaucer's travels, private life, and the early circulation of his writings, this innovative biography documents a series of vivid episodes, moving from the commercial wharves of London to the frescoed chapels of Florence and the kingdom of Navarre, where Christians, Muslims, and Jews lived side by side. The narrative recounts Chaucer's experiences as a prisoner of war in France, as a father visiting his daughter's nunnery, as a member of a chaotic Parliament, and as a diplomat in Milan, where he encountered the writings of Dante and Boccaccio. At the same time, the book offers a comprehensive exploration of Chaucer's writings, taking the reader to the Troy of Troilus and Criseyde, the gardens of the dream visions, and the peripheries and thresholds of The Canterbury Tales. By exploring the places Chaucer visited, the buildings he inhabited, the books he read, and the art and objects he saw, this landmark biography tells the extraordinary story of how a wine merchant's son became the poet of The Canterbury Tales." -- Publisher's description.
"Builds expertly and significantly on several earlier feminist analyses of Chaucer's works. . . . An important addition to the growing body of work devoted to Chaucer and gender. . . . One of the real strengths of this work is the way in which it ties medieval notions of gender both to ancient, Aristotelian views and to modern and postmodern feminist theories."--Laura Howes, University of Tennessee, Knoxville "A seminal critical text in Chaucer and medieval studies. . . . Thoroughly enjoyable."--Liam Purdon, Doane College, Crete, Nebraska Catherine S. Cox considers the significance of gender in relation to language and poetics in Chaucer's writing. Examining selections from The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde, The Legend of Good Women, and the ballades, she explores Chaucer's concern with gender and language both within the context of fourteenth-century culture and in light of contemporary feminist and poststructuralist theory. Cox argues that Chaucer's attention to gender and language exposes the contradictory notions of woman in medieval culture. Further, resisting the imposition of modern, reductive theoretical concerns on medieval authors, Cox makes a compelling case for a Chaucer who both confirms and challenges the orthodoxy of his day, thereby countering recent arguments that insist upon a wholly feminist or wholly patriarchal Chaucer. Informed by a broad range of traditional literary and historical scholarship (including Aristotelian philosophy, medieval Latin culture, and the writings of the Church fathers) as well as by recent psychoanalytical debates related to postmodern feminist critical theory (including those of Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, and feminist film theorists), Cox's study demonstrates the significant interplay among ancient, medieval, and modern issues of scholarship and learning. Catherine S. Cox is assistant professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, Johnstown, and the author of articles on Dante, Henryson, and other medieval writers.
Alcuin Blamires explains how Chaucer shapes human problems in terms of the uneasy mix of moral traditions at the time. He looks at the main ethical and gender issues that dominate Chaucer's work
A collection of essays on Chaucer's poetry, this guide provides up-to-date information on the history and textual contexts of Chaucer's work, on the ranges of critical interpretation, and on the poet's place in English and European literary history.
