Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index


  • Record Number: 41362
  • Author(s)/Creator(s): Piercy , Hannah
  • Contributor(s):
  • Title: Emelye and the Proud Lady in Love: Race, Intersectionality, and Agency
  • Source: Gender and Aliens, Gender and Medieval Studies Conference, Durham University, January 7-10. 2019.
  • Description:
  • Article Type: Conference Paper Abstract
  • Subject (See Also): Waiting to be Indexed
  • Award Note:
  • Geographic Area: General
  • Century: General
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  • Abstract: This paper compares the representation of Emelye in Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale with a group of women in medieval romance literature who I argue can be referred to as ‘the proud lady in love’. This term comes from the epithet given to Eglantine in Blanchardyn and Eglantine, but is useful more broadly to identify the different forms in which this character recurs across medieval romance. ‘The proud lady in love’ is a figure who asserts her agency, refusing to marry anyone other than the finest knight in the world, and sometimes refusing to marry at all. In many ways, Emelye can be seen as a proud lady in love. Yet Emelye’s experience is also different to many of the other proud ladies in love. In this paper, I explore two diverging lines of thought. The first argues that when accounting for the difference in Emelye’s experiences, we must consider Emelye thorugh the lens of intersectionality: as an Amazon woman, alienated from her race and nationality, and living in the city-state of Athens, almost as a prisoner of war. In this respect, Emelye is markedly different to the other ‘proud ladies in love’, who are, without exception, privileged white Christian women of high status. Despite Chaucer’s erasure of Emelye’s Amazon race, and his constant references to her ‘fairness’, we can uncover Emelye’s Amazon identity and acknowledge the multiple forms of oppression working against her to secure her lack of choice in marriage. However, the other line of thought I explore suggests that Emelye is not completely deprived of agency. Although she ends the Knight’s Tale in silence, and is married off to Palamon without explicitly consenting, she at least is not used to ventriloquise the desirability of a marriage she once resisted, as are several of the other proud ladies, including the Fere from Ipomadon.
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  • Conference Info: Gender and Aliens - Durham University, 2019 - Gender and Medieval Studies Conference
  • Year of Publication: 2019.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN/ISBN: Not Available