Chaucer Context, Lenses and Critical Views

Feminist Lens

• Proto-feminist

• His representation of May and Wife of Bath shows this

• Also seen in his kind of mocking view of January

• “A woman speaks in defence of desires” (Pugh)

Christian Lens

• Marriage is a sacrament

• St Augustine theorised venial and mortal sins surrounding marriage

• Chaucer explores a distorted view of theology

• Black Death had just happened, so faith was wavering amongst the public

• There is no true moral resolution, possibly a critique of bible stories being idealised

• “Hortus conclusus of Marian symbolism, revealing his useful distortion of sacred ideals.” [A preface to Chaucer (1962)]

Marxist Lens

• Marriage as a Transaction, reflects Marx concept of commodification

• Class dynamics reflects Marx Class struggle

• Ideological control reflects Marx idea on false consciousness

• “Instructive resonance with Marx’s account of this so-called ‘sense of having’” (Crushman)

Psychoanalytic Lens

• Relationship between subconscious mind and conscious cations and thoughts

• Mind of the author, mind of the characters, mind of the audience, the text

Satirical/ Literary Tradition

• Merchants perspective is that men can be controlled by women

• Chaucer critiques transactional and shallow view of marriage

• “May reverses all the qualities of a good wife” (Cooper)

Gender Roles

• Men are meant to be strong and women pretty and weak

• This is subverted in Merchants tale where May is in power and January is ignorant and weak

• “Comedic inversion of the unequal dichotomy of husband/wife.” (Zedolik)

• Women are “desired more to please than instruct” (Dryden) - This is flipped in the tale

• St Jerome ‘Wickedness of wives’

• La Roman de la Rose - Courtly love

• Guy of Warwick exaggerates conventional behaviour expected of the aristocratic genders

Power

• January is powerful at the market place, in bed, in the age gap

• May is powerful in her sexual power, deceptive power, female power and power in the context of marriage

• “Youth’s victory over age” (Davidson)

• “The male exploitation of economic power for erotic purchase” (Martin)

Sight and Blindness

• January is physically and metaphorically blind

• “He loses control when the action moves to the garden” (King)

Les Perdris (The Partridges)

• Wife deceives husband and preist

• “the wife’s speech functions not only to cover the truth, and not only to produce perceptions that fool the men, but also to manipulate reality in a way that constructs the very scene her speech claims to represent.”

Le Prestre qui abevete (The Priest who peeked)

• “Speech that produces both action and perception, constituting its own link to the outside world, is powerful.”

• A priest has sex with this guys wife, deception (like damyan and may)