Reflecting Pools: The Thematic Construction of Gender in Medieval Romance.
- Author/Editor
- Grinnell, Natalie
- Title
- Reflecting Pools: The Thematic Construction of Gender in Medieval Romance.
- Published
- Grinnell, Natalie. "Reflecting Pools: The Thematic Construction of Gender in Medieval Romance." PhD thesis, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1997.
- Review
- "This dissertation employs the methodology of feminist thematics to examine the motif of the reflecting pool in signalling and shaping gender relationships in medieval romances by Chrétien de Troyes, Guillaume de Lorris, Jean de Meun, Geoffrey Chaucer, and John Gower. It has long been recognized that later medieval romances create and perpetuate masculine and feminine stereotypes, hierarchies of reason and love, spirit and flesh, strength and weakness. My work identifies a steady movement toward thickening the boundaries of these stereotypes and rejecting earlier, semi-mythological representations of female power. By examining a series of traditional canonical texts through a common motif invested with the cultural and poetic ideals of medieval love poetry, my study illuminates the means by which the definitions of gender which permeate our culture today were absorbed into western literary tradition." Directed by F. Anne Payne. [JGN 17.2]
- Date
- 1997
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis