2. Schoolrooms, science, female intuition

Abstract

‘Schoolrooms, science, female intuition’ describes the teaching in the medieval schoolroom and explains that few women at the time of Chaucer learned to read and write. Schoolboys entered the educational scheme at the trivium, which was dedicated to grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Beyond this lay the higher arts of the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music). Chaucer’s engagement with these levels is shown in his works the Boece and Treatise on the Astrolabe. In The Wife of Bath’s Tale and Man of Law’s Tale, Chaucer shows how he is sympathetic to women, depends upon their patronage and protection, imitates their voices, and tries to please them.