Main Menu | List of entries | finished

PHASIPHA. Pasiphae, daughter of the Sun, was King Minos's wife and queen of Crete. Because her husband refused to sacrifice a beautiful white bull he had promised Poseidon, the god caused Pasiphae to fall in love with the animal. Daedalus made a wooden cow into which the queen entered when she wanted to enjoy her passion. The Minotaur, half man, half bull, was the result (Met VIII.130-137, IX.736-740; OM VIII.617-956).

Phasipha is an evil wife in Jankyn's book of wikked wives, WBP 733-736. [Clitermystra: Eriphilem: Jankyn2: Minos: Mynotaur]

Phasipha, the medieval spelling variant, occurs in a medial position, WBP 733; ph is the medieval rendering of aspirated /p/.


Ovid, Met, ed. and trans. F.J. Miller, I: 414-415; II: 56-57; OM, ed. C. de Boer, III, deel 30: 123-132; R.A. Pratt, "Jankyn's Book of Wikked Wyves: Medieval Antimatrimonial Propaganda in the Universities." AnM 3 (1962): 5-27; B.L. Witlieb, "Chaucer and the Ovide Moralisé." N&Q 215 (1970): 206.
From CHAUCER NAME DICTIONARY
Copyright © 1988, 1996 Jacqueline de Weever
Published by Garland Publishing, Inc., New York and London.

Main Menu | List of entries | finished