CHAUCER'S CANTERBURY MARE

This article seeks a lexical context for Chaucer's use of 'mare' to describe his Pardoner. 'Mare' has long been a derogatory epithet for a woman. The problem is whether, in Chaucer's day, a lexical situation existed in which it was applied to men exhibiting what was fel...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 1987-01, Vol.88 (2), p.192-199
Main Author: Gillam, Doreen M. E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
English speaking literatures
French speaking and English speaking literatures
Geldings
Great Britain. Ireland
History and sciences of litterature
History of literature
Homosexuality
Horses
Insults
Male homosexuality
Men
Middle Ages
Narrators
Poetry
Sagas
Tale
Taunting
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Summary:This article seeks a lexical context for Chaucer's use of 'mare' to describe his Pardoner. 'Mare' has long been a derogatory epithet for a woman. The problem is whether, in Chaucer's day, a lexical situation existed in which it was applied to men exhibiting what was felt to be typically female sexual behaviour. Its appearance, at a later period, in advertisements describing gelded horses is noted. A twelfth century, Latin metaphor, parallel to Chaucer's is known and there is a later, English, usage by John Ford. A persistent element in modern bucks' night jokes accuses the evening's hero of playing a woman sexually and, pre-dating Chaucer, is a well-attested tradition in early Scandinavian literature of taunting cowardly men with effeminacy by calling them 'mares'. This fragmentary evidence offers, perhaps, a glimpse of a common European metaphorical tradition on which Chaucer could rely for effect when he brought the physical description of his Pardoner to a climax with the word 'mare'.
ISSN:0028-3754
2736-9714