Deviance

Chaucer has a preoccupation with deviance throughout his oeuvre beginning with his translation of La Roman de la Rose. After an analysis of how deviance works in Chaucer's Romaunt of the Rose, this chapter traces it through his "Legend of Lucrece," The Miller's Tale, and Troilus and Criseyde. In each text, Chaucer explores deviance both in relation to courtly love and to the homosocial fabric of late medieval society built on courtly love. He is both aware of the issues with such a culture and yet also very much a part of it. Consequently, this chapter attempts to navigate that tension by revealing Chaucer's awareness of deviance's ill effects while at the same time participating in such deviance from his position of male privilege.