"Olde feble wymmen with perseuerance ouercome many longe pilgrimages": Mapping the Feminine in Disce mori

Renevey, Denis

doi:10.1353/sac.2020.0013

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“…By allowing women's agency to reflect wisdom and inspire other people's salvation, the poet promotes the view that “God gave women the power of speech so that they might serve Him” (Niebrzydowski, 2020, p. 335), thus empowering women to “offer a fruitful alternative to the inherent decay of male‐centered reproduction” (Waters, 2020, p. 451). Also, he “crafts an elaborate female textual subjectivity” (Renevey, 2020, p. 354) and “opens the narrative up to the possibility of salvation rather than closing it down in visions of necrophilic pain” (Magnani & McAvoy, 2020, p. 318). This approach complies neither with the medieval belief that women are “passive or, worse, deforming vessels of male seed” (Waters, 2020, p. 450) nor with Saint Paul's patriarchal principle that “a woman should learn in quietness and full submission […] she must be silent” (1 Timothy 2:12).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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: 99%

Chaucer's gender‐oriented philosophy in The Canterbury Tales

Zuraikat

2023

Literature Compass

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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"Olde feble wymmen with perseuerance ouercome many longe pilgrimages": Mapping the Feminine in Disce mori

Cited by 1 publication

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Chaucer's gender‐oriented philosophy in The Canterbury Tales

Chaucer's gender‐oriented philosophy in The Canterbury Tales

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