The Legend of Good Women Geoffrey Chaucer

Chaucer’s artful and intentional exclusion of Venus and Aeneas’ complete conversation from “The Aeneid,” using occupatio, gives Chaucer the auctor authority to include divine intervention when it suits his purpose, but not so heavily that the gods...

In The Legend of Good Women, the God of Love predicates his definition of a “good woman” on the actions of surrounding characters rather than the protagonist herself. Being “virtuous” requires no action in these legends. Instead, it insists on a...

When reading Geoffrey Chaucer's The Legend of Good Women, readers will notice that none of these good women are granted satisfying lives or happy endings. Nearly all of them meet tragic, even gruesome, ends––these women are betrayed, abandoned,...

It is notable that within the medieval period, attitudes towards women were notoriously polarised, particularly within Middle English literature; and thus it is no surprise that when a poet opts to focus upon women within their works, their...