Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

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2. Introduction: In Hir Corages: Chaucer and the Animal Real

   1. Introduction: In Hir Corages: Chaucer and the Animal Real

      • Carolynn Van Dyke

      Pages 1-10

3. The Natural Creature

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 11-11

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   2. Among All Beasts: Affective Naturalism in Late Medieval England

      • Aranye Fradenburg

      Pages 13-31

   3. Feathering the Text

      • Carol Freeman

      Pages 33-47

   4. Shrews, Rats, and a Polecat in “The Pardoner’s Tale”

      • Sandy Feinstein, Neal Woodman

      Pages 49-66

4. Animal Lessons

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 67-67

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   2. Chaucer’s Chicks: Feminism and Falconry in “The Knight’s Tale,” “The Squire’s Tale,” and The Parliament of Fowls

      • Sara Gutmann

      Pages 69-83

   3. Foiled by Fowl: The Squire’s Peregrine Falcon and the Franklin’s Dorigen

      • Lorraine Kochanske Stock

      Pages 85-100

   4. That Which Chargeth Not to Say: Animal Imagery in Troilus and Criseyde

      • Carolynn Van Dyke

      Pages 101-112

5. Becoming-Animal

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 113-113

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   2. Avian Hybridity in “The Squire’s Tale”: Uses of Anthropomorphism

      • Sara Deutch Schotland

      Pages 115-130

   3. Reimagining Natural Order in “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue”

      • Laura Wang

      Pages 131-142

   4. Contemplating Finitude: Animals in The Book of the Duchess

      • Christopher Roman

      Pages 143-155

6. Contested Boundaries

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 157-157

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   2. Animal Agency, The Black Knight, and the Hart in The Book of the Duchess

      • Ryan R. Judkins

      Pages 159-172

   3. “A Beest May Al His Lust Fulfille”: Naturalizing Chivalric Violence in Chaucer’s “Knight’s Tale”

      • Jeremy Withers

      Pages 173-183

   4. A Fourteenth-Century Ecology: “The Former Age” With Dindimus

      • Karl Steel

      Pages 185-199

7. Cross-Species Discourse

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 201-201

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   2. Chaucer’s Chauntecleer and Animal Morality

      • Megan Palmer Browne

      Pages 203-215

Building on recent work in critical animal studies and posthumanism, this book challenges past assumptions that animals were only explored as illustrative of humanity, not as interesting in their own right. The contributors combine close reading of Chaucer's texts with insights drawn from cultural or critical animal studies.

• Chaucer
• Close reading
• gender
• law
• Medieval Literature
• Middle Ages
• naturalism
• novel
• British and Irish Literature

“Re-thinking Chaucerian Beasts, a timely collection of sixteen essays addressing the meanings of animals and animality in Chaucer’s poetry … . should be considered essential reading not only for all Chaucerians but for any scholar wishing to remain in sync with critical theorizings of medieval texts undertaken under the enabling aegis of the ‘animal turn.’” (Peter W. Travis, Speculum, Vol. 91 (1), January, 2016)

"This book of sixteen short essays offers Chaucerians an array of perspectives, some theoretically adept, others easing readers gently into critical animal studies." - The Medieval Review

"Dyke has assembled a timely collection, since critical animal studies have risen recently in status and visibility . . . this volume will likely be of some interest to researchers working on medieval attitudes toward the animal, and the brevity of the essays may make them suitable for the undergraduate classroom as well . . . Recommended." - Choice

Carolynn Van Dyke is Francis A. March Professor of English at Lafayette College.

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