Larissa “Kat” Tracy, Professor of Medieval Literature in the Department of English and Modern Languages, recently published a peer-reviewed article in the Medieval Feminist Forum, titled “Chaucer’s Pardoner: The Medieval Culture of Cross-Dressing and Problems of Religious Authority.” This article, which argues that Chaucer’s Pardoner can be read as a cross-dressing woman who disguises herself as a man in order to attain a position of religious power that would otherwise be denied to her, uses contextual and linguistic evidence from Old French fabliaux, Middle English hagiography, Old French romance, and historical narratives of Pope Joan and Joan of Arc to paint a more comprehensive portrait of the larger culture of cross-dressing in late-medieval Europe.
This article is part of a larger monograph on the medieval culture of cross-dressing.
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