The Grammar of Rape in Chaucer and Gower

As a Past-President of the Canadian Society of Medievalists, I gave the following plenary address at the 2022 annual conference. The address argues that a close analysis of the grammar of Chaucer’s and Gower’s descriptions of the rapes of Lucretia and Philomena, especially paying attention to the positioning of the audience through that grammar, shows that while Gower is interested in the audience experiencing pity for the raped women, Chaucer, by grammatically forcing the audience to experience the same emotions as the raped women, encourages empathy. Since I presented this paper, two new Chaucer life records have been discovered; consequently, I have changed the beginning.