Representations of masculinity in Chaucer's works examined through modern critical theory. How does Chaucer portray the various male pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales? How manly is Troilus? To what extent can the spirit and terminology of recent feminist criticism inform the study of Chaucer's men? Is there such athing as a distinct `Chaucerian masculinity', or does it appear in a multitude of different forms? These are some of the questions that the contributors to this ground-breaking and provocative volume attempt to answer, using a diversity of critical methods and theories. Some look at the behaviour of noble or knightly men; some at clerics, or businessmen, or churls; others examine the so-called "masculine" qualities of female characters, and the "feminine"qualities of male characters. Topics include the Host's bourgeois masculinity; the erotic triangles operating in the Miller's Tale; why Chaucer `diminished' the sexuality of Sir Thopas; and whether Troilus is effeminate, impotent or an example of true manhood. PETER G. BEIDLER is the Lucy G.Moses Distinguished Professor of English at Lehigh University. Contributors: MARK ALLEN, PATRICIA CLARE INGHAM, MARTIN BLUM, DANIEL F. PIGG, ELIZABETH M. BIEBEL, JEAN E. JOST, CAROL EVEREST, ANDREA ROSSI-REDER, GLENN BURGER, PETER G. BEIDLER, JEFFREY JEROME COHEN, DANIEL RUBEY, MICHAEL D. SHARP, PAUL R. THOMAS, STEPHANIE DIETRICH, MAUD BURNETT MCINERNEY, DEREK BREWER

This book argues that Chaucer challenges his culture's mounting obsession with vision, constructing a model of 'manhed' that blurs the distinction between agency and passivity in a traditional gender binary.

New studies of the problem of medieval masculinity, and Chaucer's treatment of it. Issues relating to the male characters and the construction of masculinities in Chaucer's masterpiece of love found and love lost are explored here. Collectively the essays address the question of what it means to be a man in theMiddle Ages, what constitutes masculinity in this era, and how such masculinities are culturally constructed; they seek to advance scholarly understanding of the themes, characters, and actions of Troilus and Criseyde through thehermeneutics of medieval and modern concepts of manliness. Throughout, they argue that Troilus and the other characters, including Criseyde, are subject to multiple and conflicting interpretations, especially in regard to the intersections of their genders with their sexual performances and their conflicted relationships to generic expectations for gendered conduct. Contributors: JOHN M. BOWERS, MICHAEL CALABRESE, HOLLY A. CROCKER, KATE KOPPELMAN, MOLLY MARTIN, MARCIA SMITH MARZEC, GRETCHEN MIESZKOWSKI, JAMES J. PAXSON, TISON PUGH, R. ALLEN SHOAF, ROBERT S. STURGES, ANGELA JANE WEISL, RICHARD ZEIKOWITZ

Fourteenth-century author, poet, and civil servant Geoffrey Chaucer has delighted readers through the ages with his colorful tales filled with humanity, grace, and strength. He is best known for ""The Canterbury Tales"", a vibrant account of life in England during his own day. That canonical work, along with some of Chaucer's lesser-known works, is thoughtfully presented in this invaluable reference resource. This new volume in the ""Bloom's How to Write about Literature"" series assists students in developing paper topics about this frequently studied Englishman.

The concept of kingship was a major preoccupation for the Ricardian poets, as this full treatment shows.

This book explores the rich, complex, literary tradition of the medieval go-between. Idealized going between usually leads to marriage and it develops a new dimension of the much debated question of courtly love and woman's part in it. Chaucer's Pandarus's place in this go-between tradition is a tour de force.

This book makes a vigorous reassessment of the moral dimension in Chaucer's writings. For the Middle Ages, the study of human behaviour generally signified the study of the morality of attitudes, choices, and actions. Moreover, moral analysis was not gender neutral: it presupposed that certain virtues and certain failings were largely gender-specific. Alcuin Blamires - mainly concentrating on The Canterbury Tales - discloses how Chaucer adapts the composite inherited traditions of moral literature to shape the significance and the gender implications of his narratives. Chaucer, Ethics, and Gender is therefore not a theorization of ethical reading but a discussion of Chaucer's engagement with the literature of practical ethical advice. Working with the commonplace primary sources of the period, Blamires demonstrates that Stoic ideals, somewhat uncomfortably absorbed within medieval Christian moral codes as Chaucer realized, penetrate the poet's constructions of how women and men behave in matters (for instance) of friendship and anger, sexuality and chastity, protest and sufferance, generosity and greed, credulity and foresight. The book will be absorbing for all serious readers or teachers of Chaucer because it is packed with commanding new insights. It offers illuminating explanations concerning topics that have often eluded critics in the past: the flood-forecast in The Miller's Tale, for example; or the status of emotion and equanimity in The Franklin's Tale; the 'unethical' sexual trading in the Shipman's Tale; the contemporary moral force of a widow's curse in The Friar's Tale; and the quizzical moral link between the Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale. There is even a new hypothesis about the conceptual design of The Canterbury Tales as a whole. Deeply informed and historically alert, this is a book that engages its reader in the vital role played by ethical assumptions (with their attendant gender assumptions) in Chaucer's major poetry.

This book examines the scholarly construction of Geoffrey Chaucer in different historical eras, and challenges long-standing assumptions to enhance the theoretical dialogue on Chaucer's historical reception.

A wide range of new scholarship on Chaucer's poetry. This collection of essays makes available a wide range of new scholarship on Chaucer's poetry. Opening essays address the issues of "Chaucerian representation" and "Chaucerian poetics", arguing for the multiplicity and complexityof what Chaucer "represents" and for the importance of his dual Anglo-French background in enabling him to articulate that complexity. Chaucer's use of Ovidian and Ciceronian sources and ideas is examined, and his pursuit of simplicity and suspicion of "delicacy"; the potent issues of sexuality and spirituality, and money and death (with Chaucer's own ending and his thoughts on last things) complete the collection. Contributors: DEREK BREWER, HELEN COOPER, PAUL DOWER, JOHN V. FLEMING, JOHN HILL, TRAUGOTT LAWLER, CELIA LEWIS, R. BARTON PALMER, WILLIAM PROVOST, JOHN PLUMMER, WILLIAM ROGERS.

Of all the stories that comprise The Canterbury Tales, certain ones have attracted more attention than others in terms of literary scholarship and canonization. The Monk's Tale, for instance, was popular in the decades after Chaucer's death, but has since suffered critical neglect, particularly in the twentieth century. The opposite has occurred with the Nun's Priest's Tale, which has long been one of the most popular and widely discussed of the tales, cited by some critics as the most essentially 'Chaucerian' of them all. This annotated bibliography is a record of all editions, translations, and scholarship written on The Monk's Tale and the Nun's Priest's Tale in the twentieth century with a view to revisiting the former and creating a comprehensive scholarly view of the latter. A detailed introduction summarizes all extant writings on the two tales and their relationship to each other, giving a sense of the complexity of Chaucer's seminal work and the unique function of its component stories. By dealing with these two tales in particular, this bibliography suggests the complicated critical reception and history of The Canterbury Tales.