Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

2013

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Abstract

Geoffrey Chaucer's narrator persona in The Legend of Good Women (LGW) goes through a transformation, starting off in the Prologue to the LGW as a naèive compilator who is subordinate to his literary sources, or auctores, and eventually becoming an auctor himself by the end of the Legends. To gain an authoritative voice, Chaucer's narrator criticizes auctoritee as it pertains to the antifeminist tradition and its misrepresentation of women as inherently wicked, in the process using certain rhetorical devices and other literary strategies to assert control over his sources for the Legends, as well as over the text as a whole. Of particular importance in this process is the narrator's line "[a]nd trusteth, as in love, no man but me" (2561) occurring near the end of "The Legend of Phyllis," the penultimate legend in the LGW. At this point in the text, the narrator persona steps completely outside of the role of compilator and presents himself as auctor who can be trusted by his female readers to tell their stories fairly and sympathetically, in ways that subtly confront antifeminist texts and perceptions.

Extent

v, 61 p.

Comments

by Franklin Babrove.|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013.|Includes bibliography.|Mode of access: World Wide Web.|System requirements: Adobe Reader.|by Franklin Babrove.

Identifier

FADT3362330

Format

pdf

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