Social Construction And Subjectivity In Age As Performance

The issue of age is one topic repeatedly referred to in quite a few tales of The Canterbury Tales by medieval English poet Geoffrey Chaucer,among which are "The Miller’s Tale," "The Merchant’s Tale," "The Reeve’s Prologue," and "The Wife of Bath’s Prologue." Being a writer in the specific historical context of the Middle Ages when the elderly were severely marginalized,though Chaucer from time to time seems to agree with the mainstream ageist attitude back then by depicting old people as naturally foolish and evil with an ugly body,he at the same time sheds some revolutionary insight into the modern understanding of age-not so much a biological attribute as a social construction.Therefore,the first half of this thesis aims to offer a post-structuralist reading of the concept of age in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales by pointing out the societal and cultural forces underneath natural and biological age.In the second half of the thesis,the performative dimension of age in The Canterbury Tales is highlighted,especially through two truly anti-traditional figures created by Chaucer:January from "The Merchant’s Tale,"and the Wife of Bath from"The Wife of Bath’s Prologue." Under the lens of Cheryl Laz’s theory on "Age as Performance," the author attempts to demonstrate how age becomes accomplished through individual performances,and more specifically,how old people like January and the Wife of Bath maintain or achieve their subjectivity by performing their age respectively.