Chaucer and Trauma
About this book
Trauma is an inescapable condition of Chaucer's works. From the ravaging of Troy and the abandonment of Dido to the devastating aftereffects of sexual assault, Chaucer portrayed the most unsettling, searing aspects of human experience. While the term "trauma" was not part of Chaucer's vocabulary, the author was assuredly aware of its causes and consequences, its victims and symptoms.
This timely volume explores depictions of violence, victimhood, and overwhelming grief or loss in Chaucer's most ambitious texts, Troilus and Criseyde and the Canterbury Tales. The authors examine layers of deep emotional suffering in Chaucer's works, as well as those forces that perpetrate injustices against human beings. The essays scrutinize Chaucer's narratives through close textual analysis and modern theoretical approaches, offering original perspectives and treating subjects relevant to contemporary concerns—rape, domestic violence, slavery, forced consent, family separation, natural catastrophe, pandemic, and more. Written by leading voices in the field, Chaucer and Trauma is designed to introduce readers of Chaucer to a topic of intense present interest.
Along with the volume editors, the contributors include Sarah Baechle, David K. Coley, Suzanne M. Edwards, Carissa M. Harris, Matthew W. Irvin, Kate Koppelman, Samuel F. McMillan, and Lynn Staley.
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Information
Table of contents
- COVER Front
- Copyright Page
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1: Thinking Plague and Intergenerational Traumain the Canterbury Tales
- Chapter 2: Rape Myth, Trauma Reality Reading Survival in Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale
- Chapter 3: Motherhood Interrupted Bodies, Borders, and Chaucer’s Griselda
- Chapter 4: Griselda as Familial Slave Trauma and Caste in the Clerk’s Tale
- Chapter 5: Claiming Trauma Antifeminist Backlash, Gendered Victimization, and Shrewish Rage
- Chapter 6: The Sublime Trauma of Chaucer’s Franklin’s Tale
- Chapter 7: Witnessing Sexual Violence in the Tale of Melibee
- Chapter 8: Criseyde and the Nontraumatic Kernel
- Chapter 9: Criseyde, the Face of Trauma
- Bibliography
- Index
