论文部分内容阅读
The Merchants Tale is one of the most intriguing tales in Medieval literary canon The CanterburyTales. In this tale, Chaucer created the Pluto-Proserpina episode which alludes to the biblical story of God expelling Adam and Eve. Previous stud-ies of the episode mainly focus on historical and mythological background of two pagan gods with some focusing on narrative function of the episode. Nevertheless, when examined through the lens of gender studies, Pluto and Proserpina are in effect fabri-cated as a substitution of God, revealing His androgyny. This article aims to analyze similarities and differences between Pluto-Proserpina episode, examine Gods images in Holy Bible and Medieval society, and finally conclude that the modified God creat-ed by Chaucer in the Pluto-Proserpine episode unveils androgyny of God, which is a great challenge to Medieval ideology con-cing Gods gender.