Consent and Lemman in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Reeve’s Tale

The use of the Middle English word lemman loved one, paramour, or sweetheart by Malyne, daughter of the miller Symkyn in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Reeve's Tale, complicates an already fraught speech (I.4240-4247). It is uttered after her sexual encounter with the university student Aleyn. Their intercourse remains charged in Chaucer studies because of (1) the nature of how coitus is initiated and (2) Malyne's reaction afterwards a speech followed by weeping. Understood within Chaucer's own biography his release from charges of raptus by Cecily Chaumpaigne this tale has inevitably generated charged controversy. The word lemman occurs over a dozen times in the Chaucer corpus, mainly in The Canterbury Tales. ...