1994 Chapters (Layout Features)

Introduction

Crane, Susan

The Thesis of this book is that gender is crucial to Geoffrey Chaucer's conception of romance in the
Canterbury Tales. In Chaucer's works, as in those of other poets who engage romance, gender provides a way of reading aspects of the genre beyond courtship alone. Social hierarchies, magic, adventure, and less salient preoccupations of romance are so intimately involved in gender that their operations are unclear in isolation from it. My concern is not with identifying specific sources and analogues for the Canterbury Tales nor with encompassing in my discussion every aspect of romance. The many studies that illuminate these issues provide a context for investigating more specifically how Chaucer understood the place and meaning of gender in the history of romance.