This compilation of new essays and essays published over the past fifty years explores Chaucer's experiences with the cultural other, especially Chaucer's relationship to Far Eastern, Islamic, and African sources. While studies of Chaucer's orientalism have heretofore focused on the Squire's Tale , Chaucer's Cultural Geography considers many different Chaucerian works in the context of sexual geographies and colonizing and postcolonizing discourses. It comes at a time when critical methodology is being debated and a variety of approaches to Chacuer studies using modes of analyses normally reserved for later periods, including Said's orientalism theories, Dollimore's transgressive proximity and new French feminism. Moreover, the book fits well into the new emphasis in the Chaucer curriculum on globalism and multiculturalism.
Biography
Kathryn Lynch, PhD, is Professor and Chair of English at Wellesley College. She is a graduate of Stamford and received her PhD in English from the University of Virginia. She is the author of numerous articles and reviews on Chaucer.
