E-Thesis 13 views
Representations of the Enclosed Garden in Chaucer and His Contemporaries / MARIA ZYGOGIANNI
Swansea University Author: MARIA ZYGOGIANNI
DOI (Published version): 10.23889/SUThesis.72144
Abstract
This thesis explores gardens in three of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and one of the Chaucerian apocryphal texts as privileged sites where gender, power, nature, and temporality intersect. Drawing on eco-feminism, queer phenomenology, disability theory, and theories of time, the project examines how g...
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Swansea
2026
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| Institution: | Swansea University |
| Degree level: | Doctoral |
| Degree name: | Ph.D |
| Supervisor: | Magnani, R., McAvoy, E., Williams, A., and Gamble, S. |
| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa72144 |
| first_indexed |
2026-06-23T10:33:22Z |
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| last_indexed |
2026-06-24T05:13:02Z |
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cronfa72144 |
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RisThesis |
| fullrecord |
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2026-06-23T11:46:59.6453246 v2 72144 2026-06-23 Representations of the Enclosed Garden in Chaucer and His Contemporaries 668cf1565e07e9c1d75a4078d3d1f0b6 MARIA ZYGOGIANNI MARIA ZYGOGIANNI true false 2026-06-23 This thesis explores gardens in three of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and one of the Chaucerian apocryphal texts as privileged sites where gender, power, nature, and temporality intersect. Drawing on eco-feminism, queer phenomenology, disability theory, and theories of time, the project examines how gardens both reflect and contest medieval structures of social control, embodiment, and desire. Chapter One focuses on Emelye’s flower garden in The Knight’s Tale, reading it alongside the prison, amphitheatre, and forest as spaces of surveillance and restricted movement. It argues that Emelye’s garden embodies tensions between femininity, natural imagery, and coercive political structures, situating Theseus’ domination of women and the environment at the centre of the tale’s reflections on power. Chapter Two turns to the enclosed garden of January in The Merchant’s Tale, proposing it as prosthesis for his failing body, social aspirations, and erotic inadequacies. Framed through disability theory, this chapter investigates the interplay between garden and bedroom, exploring how May’s healing parody of Marian tradition engages with medieval associations between women, nature, and curative practice. Chapter Three analyses Dorigen’s garden in The Franklin’s Tale, positioning it within the Breton lai tradition as a site of cultivation—both agricultural and social. Parallels between garden and coastline illuminate how the tale negotiates tensions between aristocratic ideals and emergent bourgeois identities, and between wilderness, labour, and human control over nature.Chapter Four shifts beyond The Canterbury Tales to the fifteenth-century Isle of Ladies. By situating this dream-vision poem within debates of canon, anonymity, and nationhood, the chapter explores the Isle’s enclosed paradise through heterochronyand queer time, revealing how coercive chrononormativity is bound to sexual violence and conquest. Taken together, these chapters demonstrate how medieval gardens operate as contested cultural landscapes, mediating issues of gender, embodiment, temporality, and ecology across canonical and apocryphal Chaucerian texts. E-Thesis Swansea Chaucer, Medieval, Gardens, Queer Theory, Gender, Canterbury Tales, Knight’s Tale, Merchant’s Tale, Franklin’s Tale, Isle of Ladies, Romance, Fabliau, Lais, Heterotopia, Hortus Conclusus, disability theory 16 6 2026 2026-06-16 10.23889/SUThesis.72144 COLLEGE NANME COLLEGE CODE Swansea University Magnani, R., McAvoy, E., Williams, A., and Gamble, S. Doctoral Ph.D 2026-06-23T11:46:59.6453246 2026-06-23T11:21:35.5750591 Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences School of Culture and Communication - English Literature, Creative Writing MARIA ZYGOGIANNI 1 Under embargo Under embargo 2026-06-23T11:31:42.3478102 Output 2073617 application/pdf E-Thesis true 2031-06-16T00:00:00.0000000 Copyright: the author, Maria Zygogianni, 2026. Distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) true eng https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ |
| title |
Representations of the Enclosed Garden in Chaucer and His Contemporaries |
| spellingShingle |
Representations of the Enclosed Garden in Chaucer and His Contemporaries MARIA ZYGOGIANNI |
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Representations of the Enclosed Garden in Chaucer and His Contemporaries |
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Representations of the Enclosed Garden in Chaucer and His Contemporaries |
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Representations of the Enclosed Garden in Chaucer and His Contemporaries |
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Representations of the Enclosed Garden in Chaucer and His Contemporaries |
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Representations of the Enclosed Garden in Chaucer and His Contemporaries |
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This thesis explores gardens in three of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and one of the Chaucerian apocryphal texts as privileged sites where gender, power, nature, and temporality intersect. Drawing on eco-feminism, queer phenomenology, disability theory, and theories of time, the project examines how gardens both reflect and contest medieval structures of social control, embodiment, and desire. Chapter One focuses on Emelye’s flower garden in The Knight’s Tale, reading it alongside the prison, amphitheatre, and forest as spaces of surveillance and restricted movement. It argues that Emelye’s garden embodies tensions between femininity, natural imagery, and coercive political structures, situating Theseus’ domination of women and the environment at the centre of the tale’s reflections on power. Chapter Two turns to the enclosed garden of January in The Merchant’s Tale, proposing it as prosthesis for his failing body, social aspirations, and erotic inadequacies. Framed through disability theory, this chapter investigates the interplay between garden and bedroom, exploring how May’s healing parody of Marian tradition engages with medieval associations between women, nature, and curative practice. Chapter Three analyses Dorigen’s garden in The Franklin’s Tale, positioning it within the Breton lai tradition as a site of cultivation—both agricultural and social. Parallels between garden and coastline illuminate how the tale negotiates tensions between aristocratic ideals and emergent bourgeois identities, and between wilderness, labour, and human control over nature.Chapter Four shifts beyond The Canterbury Tales to the fifteenth-century Isle of Ladies. By situating this dream-vision poem within debates of canon, anonymity, and nationhood, the chapter explores the Isle’s enclosed paradise through heterochronyand queer time, revealing how coercive chrononormativity is bound to sexual violence and conquest. Taken together, these chapters demonstrate how medieval gardens operate as contested cultural landscapes, mediating issues of gender, embodiment, temporality, and ecology across canonical and apocryphal Chaucerian texts. |
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2026-06-16T07:26:40Z |
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11.109994 |