Geoffrey Chaucer's Approach to Gender: Religious Ideology and Gender Equality

Abstract

According to an order of Joan, Countess of Kent, for preaching Christianity in England of the 14th century, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote his poems “House of Fame” and “The Legend of Good Women”. In these poems, Chaucer showed himself a maker of an ideology of gender equality. He revised the ancient philosophy of love and gender conflict in new Christian sense, drawing parallels with Ovid’s “Heroides” and female social statuses in England of the 14th century. He offered a new ideological story on the basis of the Christian reinvention of Ovid. He also reconsidered several ancient Greek myths about the female sufferers, in his ideological Christian stories.