Transgressing the Borderline of Gender:Zenobia in the Monk’s Tale Keiko Hamaguchi After the Knight finishes his tale, the Host asks the Monk to "quite" (I 3119) the Knight's tale.1 The drunken Miller disturbs the Host's plan, however. Although the Monk's turn is delayed, when his turn does come, does he attempt to match the Knight's tale? The Monk is at least conscious of the Knight's Amazons when he chooses Zenobia, a woman warrior in Palmyra, among his subjects.2 Before the Monk begins his tale, he hears the Host complaining about his masculine wife: Whan she comth hoom she rampeth in my face, And crieth, "False coward, wrek thy wyf! By corpus bones, I wol have thy knyf, And thou shalt have my distaf and go spynne!" (VII 1904–7) Keeping in mind the Host's wife's remarks about an exchange of distaff and knife, the Monk presents a manly woman of the Orient who engages in masculine activity, wearing a helmet instead of a headdress and holding a sword and a scepter instead of a distaff. At the end of his story of Zenobia, the Monk humiliates and punishes the Oriental queen by forcing her to trade, in Rome, her helmet and "ceptre" for a "vitremyte" (a woman's headdress) and "distaf" (VII 2372–74). Grounded in the theory of Orientalism expounded by Edward Said and the medieval concept of the Orient represented by Saint Augustine, this essay explores why the Monk associates Zenobia's transgression of gender with the Orient. Is her otherness in gender, religion, ethnicity, and race at stake in the Monk's punishment? How do medieval concepts of the Orient and female gender intersect with each other? Based on the Aristotelian notion of the female and Christian teachings about gender roles and cross-dressing, I will examine how the Monk treats Zenobia, the queen who contradicts medieval definitions of female gender and [End Page 183] gender role. Citing cross-dressers who conceal their true sex in literary materials and chronicles, I will speculate as to why the Monk feels anxiety about cross-dressers, including Zenobia. In my exploration of the Monk's anxiety and his punishment, I will also discuss Joan of Arc, who, like Zenobia, was known to be a woman in men's clothes who held a sword or banner. Studies of medieval cross-dressing by Marjorie Garber, Valerie R. Hotchkiss, Vern L. Bullough, and Susan Crane are helpful to this purpose. Since the source of the story of Zenobia in the Monk's Tale is Boccaccio's De mulieribus claris, I will also compare how the Monk's treatment of Zenobia is changed from the treatment in Boccaccio.3 Criticism of the Monk's Tale has focused on the dramatic link between the Monk and the Knight—including his interruption of the Monk4 —and the Monk's concept of tragedy.5 Zenobia has not been fully discussed in studies of the Monk's Tale nor in studies of cross-dressing and gender. While Hotchkiss, Garber, Bullough, and Crane explore cross-dressing, Zenobia is not included in their studies,6 and only a few critics of the Monk's Tale have taken up Zenobia in their discussions. Valerie Wayne examines the ironic implications of the Monk's laudatory description of Zenobia.7 Vincent J. DiMarco investigates how the vitremyte as a symbol of femininity and humiliation is applied to Hercules in Boccaccio's De mulieribus claris and to Zenobia in Chaucer.8 Frances Biscoglio examines the iconography of the spinning woman in the Middle Ages, mentioning Zenobia only briefly.9 These critics have referred to the ironic implications of the Monk's praise of Zenobia and the symbolic meanings of headdress and distaff in terms of gender, but they have not paid attention to the fact that Zenobia is a pagan woman of the Orient. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Chela Sandoval, T. Minh-ha Trinh, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak have condemned Western feminists for neglecting particularities within women, for instance, ethnic, cultural, racial, religious, and regional differences.10 This failing is true as well of the past studies of gender in Chaucer.11 Some...