Provides a many-sided look at the poems of Chaucer and the sexual politics of his day.

The concealment of embarrassing, often sexual, secrets and the burden of political alliances and strategies-in short, sexual politics-motivated Chaucer in much of his work. This concept, long suspected but mostly ignored by Chaucer critics, finally receives its first full treatment in The Mythographic Chaucer. Firmly placing Chaucer in the cultural politics of his time, Jane Chance shows how he inverted the mythographic and textual conventions of the period for his own literary, social, and political purposes.