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Article: Interpreting female agency and responsibility in The Miller's Tale and The Merchant's Tale.(Canterbury Tales)
- Article from:
- Philological Quarterly
- Article date:
- March 22, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 University of Iowa. 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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Geoffrey Chaucer frequently displays keen interest in questions of female agency and responsibility by rendering his female characters at key moments in silences, deferred answers, absences, and unexpected submissiveness. (1) Chaucer's interest in these moments is not to portray these female figures as merely passive recipients either of the forces that construct women in texts, or of our own critical constructions. Rather, at these crucial junctures where the tale requires but does not fully enable us to construct an interpretation, the poet invites us critically to examine the ideological and discursive assumptions and limitations imposed on the act of ...