Académique Documents
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Culture Documents
Margaret McGill
ENGL 805.001
28 April 2009
No definition of postcolonial theory has bared greater citational weight as that by Homi
Bhabha: “Postcolonial criticism bears witness to the unequal and uneven social authority within
the modern world order.” But such a definition is contradictory to the very field it attempts to
explain, limiting the field to the examination of only modern situations of subjugation and
oppression. As Frantz Fanon pointed out, “colonialism is not simply content to impose its rule
upon the present and future of a dominated country,” essentially inviting scholars to excavate the
subjugated in a period even as far back as the Middle Ages. This annotated bibliography
attempts to capitalize on the flux of recent scholarship concerning both medieval and
postcolonial studies in order to help me take Fanon up on his offer in my essay concerning
postcolonial concerns surfacing in the medieval Chaucerian tales, specifically the Knight’s Tale.
In my essay, I aim to argue that a close examination of the Knight’s detailed descriptions of
Temples of Mars, Aphrodite, and Artemis reveals the modern stereotypical views of a colonized
other (as savage, feminized, and exotic, respectively), reflecting a deeply embedded imperialist
ideology at work.
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Works Cited
Brown, Catherine. “In the Middle.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 30.3 (Fall
2000): 547-74.
In her fascinating article, Brown argues that the Middle Ages were invented to be an
exotic, foreign country so that the Modern age could have a “convenient” Other against which it
could define itself. But while she applies common postcolonial concepts to the Middle Ages in
general, Brown issues several important caveats for appropriating or applying (like a coat of
paint) postcolonial theory to Medieval texts, likening the theoretician to the colonist, “as if the
theory’s task were to bring the marginal medievalism up to date.” Instead, Brown advocates
working theory from the inside out, becoming “familiar” (most literally understanding this to
mean “mak[ing] them as your family, your own flesh and blood”) with the texts. Brown also
provides a specific approach that is tailored toward medieval texts – a hybridization of both
modern theory (postcolonial theory) and medieval theory, as offered by medieval texts – that is
James Clifford’s highly accessible and informational article, “Diasporas,” argues that
of the term by recourse to an ideal model: the Jewish Diaspora. Using a postcolonial approach to
expand upon a postcolonial idea (resisting against the utilization of an ideal to inform the
Diaspora, which is essentially a “strict” list of six characteristics. After offering Safran’s
polythetic definition that might retain Safran’s features, along with other considerations.
Clifford’s article also provides an interesting addition to the discussion: that diasporic
experiences are always gendered, an argument that is thought provoking, insightful, and
particularly useful for an analysis of Emily and Hippolyta in “The Knight’s Tale.”
Cohen, Jeffrey J. “Postcolonialism.” Chaucer: An Oxford Guide. Ed. Steve Ellis. Oxford
Cohen argues the validity of proposing postcolonial theory and concepts within medieval
discourses, particularly stressing the importance of applying these concepts and criticisms to
premodern texts from Medieval England. One of Cohen’s more interesting points (that an
ambition of postcolonial theory is to grant all cultures a coevalness) parallels Catherine Brown’s
discussion of medieval works being coeval, and if paired, the two certainly would provide an
Hamaguchi, Keiko. “Domesticating Amazons in The Knight’s Tale.” Studies in the Age of
Drawing particularly from the postcolonial contributions of Homi Bhabha and Frantz
Fanon, Hamaguchi’s accessible and fascinating article argues that despite Theseus’s attempts to
“domesticate” the Amazonian Hippolyta and Emily by suppressing their Amazon-ness so that
they conform to the Western ideal (the sensitive, feudal lady), the Amazons merely comply by
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mimicking in order to disguise their otherness, thereby resisting and undermining the culture of
Pearman, Tory Vandeventer. “Laying Siege to Female Power: Theseus the ‘Conqueror’ and
Hippolita the ‘Asseged’ in Chaucer’s ‘The Knight’s Tale.’” Essays in Medieval Studies
23 (2006): 31-40.
Whereas Hamaguchi focuses much of her essay on the subjugation of Emily as Other,
Pearman specifically examines how the Knight’s term asseged – used to describe Hippolyta –
and other language of warfare are used to describe the Amazons’ capture and exchange into
marriage. Pearman argues that what is suppressed in the tale is both political (ethnicity) and
feminine (gender), revealing that marginalized voices of the text must be suppressed in order to
uphold the one “dominant ideology” – Theseus’s “civilizing” missions. Pearman’s compelling
conqueror.