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Margaret McGill

Dr. Susan Hilligoss

ENGL 805.001

28 April 2009

Theseus and Chaucer’s Knight, Subduers of “Others”:

Imperialist Ideology in Chaucer’s “The Knight’s Tale”

No definition of postcolonial theory has bared greater citational weight as that by Homi

Bhabha: “Postcolonial criticism bears witness to the unequal and uneven social authority within

the modern world order.” But such a definition is contradictory to the very field it attempts to

explain, limiting the field to the examination of only modern situations of subjugation and

oppression. As Frantz Fanon pointed out, “colonialism is not simply content to impose its rule

upon the present and future of a dominated country,” essentially inviting scholars to excavate the

subjugated in a period even as far back as the Middle Ages. This annotated bibliography

attempts to capitalize on the flux of recent scholarship concerning both medieval and

postcolonial studies in order to help me take Fanon up on his offer in my essay concerning

postcolonial concerns surfacing in the medieval Chaucerian tales, specifically the Knight’s Tale.

In my essay, I aim to argue that a close examination of the Knight’s detailed descriptions of

Temples of Mars, Aphrodite, and Artemis reveals the modern stereotypical views of a colonized

other (as savage, feminized, and exotic, respectively), reflecting a deeply embedded imperialist

ideology at work.
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Works Cited

Brown, Catherine. “In the Middle.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 30.3 (Fall

2000): 547-74.

In her fascinating article, Brown argues that the Middle Ages were invented to be an

exotic, foreign country so that the Modern age could have a “convenient” Other against which it

could define itself. But while she applies common postcolonial concepts to the Middle Ages in

general, Brown issues several important caveats for appropriating or applying (like a coat of

paint) postcolonial theory to Medieval texts, likening the theoretician to the colonist, “as if the

theory’s task were to bring the marginal medievalism up to date.” Instead, Brown advocates

working theory from the inside out, becoming “familiar” (most literally understanding this to

mean “mak[ing] them as your family, your own flesh and blood”) with the texts. Brown also

provides a specific approach that is tailored toward medieval texts – a hybridization of both

modern theory (postcolonial theory) and medieval theory, as offered by medieval texts – that is

relevant to my use of postcolonial theory as an interpretation of Chaucer’s tale.

Clifford, James. “Further Inflections: Toward Ethnographies of the Future.” Cultural

Anthropology 9.3 (Aug. 1994): 302-38.

James Clifford’s highly accessible and informational article, “Diasporas,” argues that

contemporary discourse of diasporic practices must be wary of constructing a working definition

of the term by recourse to an ideal model: the Jewish Diaspora. Using a postcolonial approach to

expand upon a postcolonial idea (resisting against the utilization of an ideal to inform the

experiences of marginalized peoples), Clifford often undermines William Safran’s definition of

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Diaspora, which is essentially a “strict” list of six characteristics. After offering Safran’s

definition, Clifford methodically complicates each characteristic, ultimately proposing a more

polythetic definition that might retain Safran’s features, along with other considerations.

Clifford’s article also provides an interesting addition to the discussion: that diasporic

experiences are always gendered, an argument that is thought provoking, insightful, and

particularly useful for an analysis of Emily and Hippolyta in “The Knight’s Tale.”

Cohen, Jeffrey J. “Postcolonialism.” Chaucer: An Oxford Guide. Ed. Steve Ellis. Oxford

University Press, 2005.

Cohen argues the validity of proposing postcolonial theory and concepts within medieval

discourses, particularly stressing the importance of applying these concepts and criticisms to

premodern texts from Medieval England. One of Cohen’s more interesting points (that an

ambition of postcolonial theory is to grant all cultures a coevalness) parallels Catherine Brown’s

discussion of medieval works being coeval, and if paired, the two certainly would provide an

interesting discussion that is relevant to my argument, in that it qualifies my use of a modern

approach to a premodern text.

Hamaguchi, Keiko. “Domesticating Amazons in The Knight’s Tale.” Studies in the Age of

Chaucer 26 (2004): 332-54.

Drawing particularly from the postcolonial contributions of Homi Bhabha and Frantz

Fanon, Hamaguchi’s accessible and fascinating article argues that despite Theseus’s attempts to

“domesticate” the Amazonian Hippolyta and Emily by suppressing their Amazon-ness so that

they conform to the Western ideal (the sensitive, feudal lady), the Amazons merely comply by
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mimicking in order to disguise their otherness, thereby resisting and undermining the culture of

conformity. This article is helpful to my discussion of Emily as exotic.

Pearman, Tory Vandeventer. “Laying Siege to Female Power: Theseus the ‘Conqueror’ and

Hippolita the ‘Asseged’ in Chaucer’s ‘The Knight’s Tale.’” Essays in Medieval Studies

23 (2006): 31-40.

Whereas Hamaguchi focuses much of her essay on the subjugation of Emily as Other,

Pearman specifically examines how the Knight’s term asseged – used to describe Hippolyta –

and other language of warfare are used to describe the Amazons’ capture and exchange into

marriage. Pearman argues that what is suppressed in the tale is both political (ethnicity) and

feminine (gender), revealing that marginalized voices of the text must be suppressed in order to

uphold the one “dominant ideology” – Theseus’s “civilizing” missions. Pearman’s compelling

argument is straightforward and enjoyable, and is relevant to my evaluation of the Knight as

conqueror.