The New York Times front page featured a bizarre story about the settlement of an old “rape” controversy regarding Geoffrey Chaucer (the 14th century writer of The Canterbury Tales). Newly Discovered Documents Support the premise that it is not.
However, culture reporter Jennifer Schuessler managed to fit the story into a #MeToo “systemic Rape Culture” framework. She reluctantly explained the apparent vindication for this Dead White Male.
A cloud has hung over Geoffrey Chaucer’s reputation for nearly 150 years. He is long considered the founder of the English literary canon.
A court document found in 1873 indicated that Chaucer was charged with raping Cecily Chaumpaigne (the daughter of a London baker). The document states that Chaumpaigne released Chaucer “all manners of actions related to mine raptus”, which is commonly translated as rape and abduction.
Recent decades have seen a lot of feminist criticism based on the suggestion that Chaucer was accused of rape. Stories like “The Wife of Bath’s Tale “….” and “The Miller’s Tale” examine sex, power, and consent.
Schuessler’s strange reluctance to let Chaucer go off the centuries-old hook is due to his tendency to indulge feminists.
Researchers found “the original writ in this case, 1379,” which proved it was a labor dispute and not a case of rape that brought Chaucer to court.
It’s a shocking claim in the world Chaucer studies. Sebastian Sobecki, a professor of English from the University of Toronto, summarized the findings in a telephone interview. He also stressed that the discovery shouldn’t be interpreted as invalidating decades of important feminist scholarship.
….
Their findings come at a time when medieval studies is particularly fractured, with heated debates about race, gender, and diversity spilling out into scholarly journals and onto Twitter. A number of scholars expressed concern that the findings could be used against feminist scholars who have been accused of trying “cancel Chaucer” in the past.
Holly Crocker, a literary scholar, stated that, despite all the evidence, she “remain[ed] insistent on the questions feminists have raised regarding the intersection of rapeculture and women’s labour should shape our collective approach towards these documents.”
Researchers had to hide their identities by presenting the views of feminist scholars outside the research.
Sobecki stated that he was concerned that the discovery could be seen as “exonerating” an incorrectly accused man and undermining valuable feminist scholarship.
He said that to prevent this possibility, he and the editors sought comment from three well-respected feminist scholars…
This sad attempt at conciliation with left-wing feminists was approved by Schuessler.
Even if Chaucer did not rape Chaumpaigne as Sobecki, Roger and Roger write, it is important to continue to discuss how he participated in hegemonic discourses which shaped the lives all women.
The preservation of the Chaucer scholarship narrative of “misogyny”, which is based on actual facts, does not matter.
[Professor Samantha Katz Seal] stated that she found the new research persuasive, and “brilliant.” However, it did not change how the rape charge — and what she claimed was the often cavalier, sexist discussion of it by male scholars –had shaped Chaucer scholarship ….. Seal also said that the new evidence did not change the fact Chaucer’s poetry was “embedded into a systematic rape cultural.”
Schuessler was much more forgiving in recent years to cop killers convicted.
