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Article: Chaucer's clergeon, or towards holiness in The Prioress's Tale.(LITERATURE)(Geoffrey Chaucer)(Critical essay)
- Article from:
- Studia Anglica Posnaniensia: international review of English Studies
- Article date:
- January 1, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Adam Mickiewicz University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The brief appearance and subsequent disappearance of the child are illogical, ominous, and loaded with significance beyond the understanding of the other characters and of the reader (Shahar 1991: 135).
ABSTRACT
A narrative aestheticized in Pre-Raphaelite visual arts and a politically charged issue in contemporary criticism, Chaucer's Prioress's tale focuses on the figure of an "enigmatic child", whose body is severed by the Jews. The boy's uncanniness and holiness are constructed in stages, while the ethnic identity of his persecutors may not be as important as some critics once thought, since the Jews function as yet another group of "infidels" in ...