The Female Voice in 'The Parliament of Fowls'

Seminar paper from the year 2022 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, Free University of Berlin (Englische Philologie), course: Medieval Studies, language: English, abstract: Geoffrey Chaucer's texts are commonly subject to the philosophical exploration of allegories of love, and nature, as well as the portrayal of sexuality and gender. The issue of feminism has been a controversial and much-disputed subject within the field of Medieval studies of Chaucerian research. The emerging interest of scholars to approach Chaucer's texts from a feminist perspective aims to figure Chaucer's view of women's role and whether he was an early feminist or not. This paper aims to investigate the concept of female voice in 'The Parliament of Fowls' and argues that the female expression of autonomous voice is influenced and even suppressed by the figures of male eagles and other birds in the audience.