Geoffrey and Gender: the Works of Geoffrey of Monmouth as Medieval “Feminism”

Readers of the extant works of Geoffrey of Monmouth will not be surprised to find a chapter on Geoffrey and gender issues in this volume, for the work in feminist theory produced during the 1980s and 1990s made such a strong case for the relevance and usefulness of feminist approaches to medieval texts that feminist interpretations are now part of the critical mainstream in medieval studies.1 However, postcolonialist work on Geoffrey’s oeuvre has tended to overshadow feminist work on it.2 A possible explanation of this pattern is