The Ends of Fellowship: Obscenity, <i>Felawe</i> Masculinity, and Gendered Vulnerability in the <i>Manciple’s Prologue and Tale</i>

ABSTRACT This article explores the connections between “felawe masculinity” and cuckoldry, masculine vulnerability, homosocial hierarchies, and gendered violence in the Manciple’s Prologue and Tale. It analyzes how the Manciple, Cook, and Host use a group of Chaucerian keywords—jape, quene, swynk, swyve, and dight—to create hierarchies of masculine value based in obscene storytelling and sexual desirability. In exploring this particular version of masculinity espoused by Chaucer’s male pilgrims from the urban mercantile-artisan classes, this article draws comparisons with contemporary incel culture and engages with recent feminist work on vulnerability and entitlement, to argue that Fragment IX’s obscenities between men lay bare their shared sense of vulnerability and illuminate the limits of a homosocial community based on obscene discursive practice, strict hierarchies among men, and the instrumental use of women to organize those hierarchies.