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Article: Performing the Prioress: "conscience" and responsibility in studies of Chaucer's Prioress's Tale.
- Article from:
- Texas Studies in Literature and Language
- Article date:
- March 22, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 University of Texas at Austin (University of Texas Press). 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 Prioress's Tale poses a very confusing and uncomfortable set of problems for critics and for readers. The tale depicts Christian violence against the Jews in fictive, literary images that are tied to an actual history of oppression that is well documented and not in doubt. This history of religious violence has thus been the focus of much study of the tale, for critics have tried for years to determine the exact relationship between the tale and the history of Christian-Jewish relations that presage the Holocaust. Central to this issue is the question of agency. Someone, that is, must be to blame for the hatred depicted in the tale--Chaucer, the Prioress, the Christian ...