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Full-Text Articles in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

The Villainess Does Damage Control: Cultural Rescue In The Man Of Law’S Tale, Lucy Esplin May 2024

The Villainess Does Damage Control: Cultural Rescue In The Man Of Law’S Tale, Lucy Esplin

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

In the late fourteenth century, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote his masterwork, The Canterbury Tales, a satirical frame narrative centered on English society. The tales follow a group of pilgrims spanning a wide range of English society, who engage in a storytelling contest as they embark on their pilgrimage. One story is the “Man of Law’s Tale,” a crusader romance that follows the pious Constance in her missionary-like journeys. She first travels to Syria to marry a Sultan, after negotiations between the Roman and Syrian rulers demanded the Sultan be baptized and control over Jerusalem would be handed over to Christians (Chaucer …


The “Fruit” Of Success: Christina Rossetti’S “Goblin Market” As An Allegory Of The 19th Century Literary Marketplace, Priyodarshini Ghosh Mar 2024

The “Fruit” Of Success: Christina Rossetti’S “Goblin Market” As An Allegory Of The 19th Century Literary Marketplace, Priyodarshini Ghosh

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” is probably her most critically acclaimed literary masterpiece. It has been accepted undoubtedly as an allegory of something, but critics have not been able to come to a unanimous conclusion as to what. Some have tried to establish it as a Christian allegory of Fall and Redemption, while others as an allegory of sexual temptation. Certain critics have hinted that this poem could be an allegory of the literary marketplace during the 19th century, which was wholly dominated by men, women’s entry into that marketplace being either restricted or marked by insurmountable obstacles. Following the …