The Critics and the Prioress: Antisemitism, Criticism, and Chaucer's Prioress's Tale by Heather Blurton & Hannah Johnson

Author:Heather Blurton & Hannah Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Literary Criticism, General, Ancient & Classical
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Published: 2017-04-19T00:00:00+00:00

In pointing out the relative lack of attention to the Prioress in these important studies, we do not intend to fault their authors, but rather to suggest that this pattern is a reflection and result of the recuperative strategies of these texts.

The fact that early feminist approaches tended to be recuperative in strategy served to deflect critical attention from the Prioress. That is, feminism first turned its critical gaze to female authors who had been marginalized by a male-oriented critical tradition, and it also animated an interest in representations of female characters in literature—especially as those representations played out at the intersections of gender and power. As Jennifer Fleissner has noted in a different context:

Because this gesture of canonizing was itself considered a feminist one, it was not surprising that the actual interpretations of these writers treated them as having much in common with the feminists who unearthed them. An empathetic interpretive dynamic was set up, one based on a sense that both the historical writers and the present-day feminists shared the same constructive, nurturing goal of bringing depth and importance to the representation of women’s lives.365

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