Feminizing Chaucer

by Jill Mann

"Women are a major subject of Chaucer's writings, and their place in his work has attracted much recent critical attention. Feminizing Chaucer investigates Chaucer's thinking about women, and re-assesses it in the light of developments in feminist criticism. It explores Chaucer's handling of gender issues, of power roles, of misogynist stereotypes and the writer's responsibility for perpetuating them, and the complex meshing of activity and passivity in human experience. Mann argues that the traditionally 'female' virtues of patience and pity are central to Chaucer's moral ethos, and that...