This essay explores the ways in which the genre of medieval lyric illuminates womenߣs literary culture. Lyrics offer insights into attitudes to women and creative engagements with gender; sacred lyrics find special inspiration in the figure of the Virgin Mary. As Fuller shows, straightforward readings are likely to be simplistic: lyrics may both speak vividly to female readers and seem distanced from the lives of actual women; the context of virginity may be as relevant to male as female religious readers; and lyrics may address complex theological questions. Romance conventions are taken up in secular lyrics, as are conventions familiar from fabliau and anti-feminist satire: women speakers are repeatedly used to voice male stereotypes. Finally, the essay demonstrates the challenges of reading the womanߣs voice in relation to the ߢFindernߣ manuscript, a fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century provincial miscellany which includes the names of five women, who, it has been argued, composed and copied a number of the lyrics written in it. Fuller demonstrates that the manuscript raises complex questions concerning the relationship between art and life which resonate across the genre.

This chapter shows how The Miller’s Tale introduces the “art of solaas” - the notion that literature can be pleasurable for its own sake - into the Canterbury Tales. It highlights key terms that the Miller introduces or redefines, like “noble,” “quite,” and “privetee,” as part of his aesthetic intervention into the storytelling game established by the Host, and explores the implications of his choice of the fabliau genre. The chapter discusses the Miller’s tale-telling style, examining his use of language and convention to create his characters and the world in which they live. Finally, the chapter anatomizes the Miller’s joke, mapping its careful construction step-by-step, and showing how Chaucer highlights the emotions and sensations of Nicholas, Absolon, and John. Ultimately, the Miller’s joke creates community through shared enjoyment - but that enjoyment has a cost, the punishments of the three male protagonists in the story. The vision of participatory festivity introduced by the Miller is quickly corrupted, however, by the Reeve’s and Cook’s distortions of quiting and pleasure, and Chaucer must turn to alternative aesthetic models for the remainder of the tales.