Chaucer, ethics, and gender

"This book makes a vigorous reassessment of the moral dimension in Chaucer's writings. Concentrating mainly on The Canterbury Tales, Alcuin Blamires discloses how Chaucer adapts the composite inherited traditions of moral literature to shape the significance and the gender implications of his narratives. Chaucer, Ethics, and Gender is therefore not a theorization of ethical reading, but a discussion of Chaucer's engagement with the literature of practical ethical advice.

Working with the commonplace primary sources of the period, Blamires demonstrates that Stoic ideals, somewhat uncomfortably absorbed within medieval Christian moral codes, penetrate the poet's constructions of how women and men behave in matters (for instance) of friendship and anger, sexuality and chastity, protest and sufferance, generosity and greed, credulity and foresight."--Jacket.

Fellowship and detraction in the architecture of the Canterbury tales : from 'The general prologue' and 'The knight's tale' to 'The parson's prologue' -- Credulity and vision : 'The miller's tale', 'The merchant's tale', 'The wife of Bath's tale' -- Sex and lust : 'The merchant's tale', 'The reeve's tale', and other Tales -- The ethics of sufficiency : 'The man of law's introduction' and 'Tale'; 'The shipman's tale' -- Liberality : 'The wife of Bath's prologue' and 'Tale' and 'The Franklin's tale' -- Problems of patience : 'The Franklin's tale', 'The clerk's tale', 'The nun's priest's tale' -- Men, women, and moral jurisdiction : 'The friar's tale', 'The physician's tale', and the pardoner -- Proprieties of work and speech : 'The second nun's prologue' and 'Tale', 'The canon's yeoman's prologue' and 'Tale', 'The manciple's prologue' and 'Tale', and 'The parson's prologue'.