Conjugal Rights in Flux in Medieval Poetry Page: 2
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Ward, Jessica D., Conjugal Rights in Flux in Medieval Poetry. Master of Arts (English),
May 2014, 64 pp., references, 59 titles.
This study explores how four medieval poems-the Junius manuscript's Genesis B and
Christ and Satan and Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and The Parliament of Fowls-
engage with medieval conjugal rights through their depictions of agentive female protagonists.
Although many laws at this time sought to suppress the rights of women, especially those of
wives', both pre- and post-conquest poets illustrate women who act as subjects, exercising legal
rights. Medieval canon and common law supported a certain amount of female agency in
marriage but was not consistent in its understanding of what that was. By considering the shifts
in law from Anglo-Saxon and fourteenth century England in relation to wives' rights and female
consent, my project asserts that the authors of Genesis B and Christ and Satan and the late-
medieval poet Chaucer position their heroines to defend legislation that supports female agency
in matters of marriage. The Anglo-Saxon authors do so by conceiving of Eve's role in the Fall
and harrowing of hell as similar to the legal role of aforespeca. Through Eve's mimesis of
Satan's rhetoric, she is able to reveal an alternate way of conceiving of the law as merciful
instead of legalistic. Chaucer also engages with a woman's position in society under the law
through his representation of Criseyde's role in her courtship with Troilus in his epic romance,
Troilus and Criseyde. Chaucer disrupts his audiences' expectations by placing Criseyde as the
more agentive party in her courtship with Troilus and shows that women might hope to the most
authority in marriage by withholding their consent. In his last dream vision, The Parliament of
Fowls, Chaucer engages again with the importance of female consent in marriage but takes his
interrogation of conjugal rights a step further by imagining an alternate legal system through
Nature, a female authority who gives equal consideration to all classes and genders.
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Ward, Jessica D. Conjugal Rights in Flux in Medieval Poetry, thesis, May 2014; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc500176/m1/2/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .