Monstrous Bodies and Transformation in Marie de France’s ‘Bisclavret’ and Chaucer’s ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale.’ (original) (raw)

Monsters, such as Bisclavret and the loathly lady, not only function as creatures of intrigue, but they are also important symbols through which to access the complexity of human identity, or more specifically in the case of “Bisclavret” and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” issues of gendered power. Considering the work of Jeffrey Jerome Cohen regarding Monster Theory and Caroline Walker Bynum’s Metamorphosis and Identity (2005), among others, this paper demonstrates how monstrous bodies serve as tools to subvert traditional notions of gendered agency and identity in the Middle Ages, and in turn, shows that the truly monstrous characters are those who commit sexual transgressions against cultural expectations.