Kenneth A. Loparo 
Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts 

Building on recent work in critical animal studies and posthumanism, this book challenges past assumptions that animals were only explored as illustrative of humanity, not as interesting in their own right. The contributors combine close reading of Chaucer’s texts with insights drawn from cultural or critical animal studies.

Table of Content

Introduction: In Hir Corages: Chaucer and the Animal Real; C.Van Dyke PART I: THE NATURAL CREATURE Among All Beasts: Affective Naturalism in Late Medieval England; A.Fradenburg Feathering the Text; C.Freeman Shrews, Rats, and a Polecat in ?The Pardoner’s Tale; S.Feinstein & N.Woodman PART II: ANIMAL LESSONS Chaucer’s Chicks: Feminism and Falconry in ?The Knight’s Tale, The Squire’s Tale, and The Parliament of Fowls; S.Gutmann Foiled by Fowl: The Squire’s Peregrine Falcon and the Franklin’s Dorigen; L.K.Stock That Which Chargeth Not to Say: Animal Imagery in Troilus and Criseyde; C.Van Dyke PART III: BECOMING-ANIMAL Avian Hybridity in The Squire’s Tale: Uses of Anthropomorphism; S.D.Schotland Reimagining Natural Order in The Wife of Bath’s Prologue; L.Wang Contemplating Finitude: Animals in The Book of the Duchess; C.Roman PART IV: CONTESTED BOUNDARIES Animal Agency, the Law of Kynde and Chaucer’s Message in The Book of the Duchess; R.R.Judkins A beest may al his lust fulfille: Naturalizing Chivalric Violence in Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale; J.Withers A Fourteenth-Century Ecology: The Former Age with Dindimus; K.Steel PART V: CROSS-SPECIES DISCOURSE Chaucer’s Chauntecleer and Animal Morality; M.Palmer Browne Talking Animals, Debating Beasts; W.A.Matlock Species or Specious? Authorial Choices in The Parliament of Fowls; M.Ridley Elmes Chaucer’s Cuckoo and the Myth of Anthropomorphism; L.Kordecki Afterword: Gender, Genre, Genus; C.Van Dyke

About the author

Carolynn Van Dyke is Francis A. March Professor of English at Lafayette College.