Fearing for Chaucer's Good Name

Hansen, Elaine Tuttle

doi:10.1179/exm.1990.2.1.23

Cited by 3 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…Such a setting points to either the problem of how “home was both private and public” (Aloni, 2006, p. 165) or the problem of unequal marriages that was a well‐known medieval phenomenon (Petry, 2004). Chaucer's severe criticism in such tales is not directed against male or female characters individualistically; it is set against their “institutions and the way they construct ‘selves’ or ‘individuals’” (Hansen, 1990, p. 25).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 76%

“…The Tales does not attribute violating or maintaining the social, religious, and moral norms to any gender exclusively, which undermines the claims that Chaucer has been aligning with “anti‐feminist literature” while writing The Tales (Huppé, 1964, p. 378) or that he “specifically and self‐consciously offers understanding or even radical criticism of the antifeminist tradition” (Hansen, 1990, p. 25). Emphasizing men and woman's self‐contradiction, passivity, lack of agency, corruption, deception, and other amoral traits and attitudes, Chaucer is not associating men or woman with evilness or reprehensibility.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Chaucer's critique is never directed against individuals or their gender, but against the several institutions, conventions, and social estates to which people belong, an approach “rooted in the medieval tradition of estates satire” (DoĞan, 2013, p. 50). He is not a canonical authority whose artistry is dedicated to “save the English Catholic past from feminization” (Warren, 2019, p. 4), but “a social critic scrutinizing individuals as products of conventions and ideology” (Hansen, 1990, p. 25).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…1 1 This term is coined by Elaine Tuttle Hansen. See Hansen (1990), Fearing for Chaucer's Good Name, Exemplaria , 2(1), 23–36 (pp. 23–24, 33). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This term is coined by Elaine Tuttle Hansen. SeeHansen (1990), Fearing for Chaucer's Good Name, Exemplaria, 2(1),23-36 (pp. 23-24, 33).2 See the introduction to Chaucer, The riverside Chaucer, pp.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Chaucer's gender‐oriented philosophy in The Canterbury Tales

Zuraikat

2023

Literature Compass

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The manipulation of gender in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is utterly opaque. While "The Knight's Tale" potentially entices readers to think that Chaucer defines a woman regarding her relationship to man, "The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale" suggests that the poet views a woman as an independent figure whose identity has nothing to do with man. This apparently controversial portrait of gender causes some critics to read Chaucer as a pro-woman individual; simultaneously, it inspires other critics to view the poet as anti-feminist. Such debate may cause readers to misjudge Chaucer's multifaceted approach towards gender as well as other hypersensitive topics, thus adding to the atmosphere of complexity and lack of clarity that dominates The Tales.Accordingly, this paper revisits Chaucer's gender-oriented philosophy in The Tales sieving what is conjectured by the poem's critics from what is said by the poet himself regarding gender. The paper concludes that Chaucer has never had the choice to overtly be or not to be the friend of woman but has always adopted a fence-sitting strategy concerning the question of gender due to his sociopolitical status.The paper confirms that Chaucer's viewpoint of women is neither feminist nor anti-feminist but a realistic amalgamation that mirrors the opaque gender culture of England in the fourteenth century.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 76%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%