Builds expertly and significantly on several earlier feminist analyses ofChaucers works.... An important addition to the growing body of work devotedto Chaucer ... » 

Builds expertly and significantly on several earlier feminist analyses ofChaucers works.... An important addition to the growing body of work devotedto Chaucer and gender.... One of the real strengths of this work is the way inwhich it ties medieval notions of gender both to ancient Aristotelian viewsand to modem and postmodern feminist theories. Laura Howes University ofTennessee KnoxvilleA seminal critical text in Chaucer and medieval studies.... Thoroughlyenjoyable. Liam Purdon Doane College Crete NebraskaCatherine S. Cox considers the significance of gender in relation to languageand poetics in Chaucers writing. Examining selections from The CanterburyTales Troilus and Criseyde The Legend of Good Women and the ballades sheexplores Chaucers concern with gender and language both within the context offourteenthcentury culture and in light of contemporary feminist and poststructuralist theory.Cox argues that Chaucers attention to gender and language exposes thecontradictory notions of woman in medieval culture. Further resisting theimposition of modern reductive theoretical concerns on medieval authors Coxmakes a compelling case for a Chaucer who both confirms and challenges theorthodoxy of his day thereby countering recent arguments that insist upon awholly feminist or wholly patriarchal Chaucer.Informed by a broad range of traditional literary and historical scholarshipincluding Aristotelian philosophy medieval Latin culture and the writings ofthe Church fathers as well as by recent psychoanalytical debates related topost modern feminist critical theory including those of Luce Irigaray JuliaKristeva and feminist filmtheorists Coxs study demonstrates the significantinterplay among ancient medieval and modern issues of scholarship andlearning. «