This Historicist and Feminist study of the Prioress's portrait in the General Prologue, The Prioress's Prologue, and The Prioress's Tale in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales introduces a new angle into Chaucerian scholarship: the influence of the Christian body-soul debate. Chapter I lays out the duties and behavior expected of a medieval Benedictine prioress, and Chapter II analyzes these expectations in conjunction with a scholarly overview of the Prioress's portrait in the General Prologue. Chapter III outlines the history and basic tenets of the body-soul debate, including manifestations of the body-soul debate in medieval debate poetry, while Chapter IV relates the Middle Ages' renewed interest in the Song of Songs and Mariology to the body-soul debate. Chapter V moves on to discuss the body-soul debate in the Prioress's Prologue and Tale.;Ultimately, this study establishes that the Prioress is an inherently dualist character, and argues that Chaucer deliberately designed her to be so. This thesis argues that the Prioress is dualistic because she embodies both the spiritual and the material sides of human nature, and further argues that the tension between her two competing natures defines her character. The tensions in the body-soul debate are identical to the ones the Prioress exhibits, and help to resolve her Tale and Prologue 's repeating themes of virginity, martyrdom, and divine ecstasy with their glaring violence, defilement, and anti-Semitism.
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