Browse Items (16354 total)

Considers representations of the power of Medea's magic and Helen's sexuality in works by male writers in medieval and early modern literature, clarifying their classical and early-medieval antecedents and assessing their powers in light of…

Explores "what constitutes 'life' in hagiographical literature" and medieval life-writing in general, focusing on "philosophical and organic categories of life" rather than "political, social, and ecclesiastic content." Assesses Walter Daniel's "Life…

Chaucer in the Platonic tradition of "philosophical poetry" where "poetry is a self-reflexive epistemological practice that interrogates the conditions of art in general." Includes chapters on the Pardoner's Old Man as a neo-Platonic Tithonus figure;…

Explores "the construction and transmission of the concept of authorship in the Italian novella in late-medieval and early modern Italy and England," Chapter four considers "how English writers and translators worked with the Italian genre, adapting…

Studies "the early modern English controversy about women--the debate about the merits and flaws of womankind--arguing that authors in the controversy took advantage of the malleability of women's voices to address issues beyond the worth of women."…

Describes literary works included in "the curriculum in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century English grammar schools," as background to understanding "the instruction of generations of schoolchildren" and "reading the Middle English literature created…

Focuses on KnT, ClT, and MkT to demonstrate that Chaucer "models his treatment" of his source-authors--Boccaccio and Petrarch--"on their own strategies of intertextual play," arguing that "intertextual engagement goes beyond mere imitation, and can…

Examines Lydgate's "Troy Book" as "as a vehicle to propagate the idea that the House of Lancaster is the legitimate successor to King Richard II in order to smooth over the usurpation of 1399." Acknowledges that "Chaucer had a definitive impact on…

Uses "abductive logic" to infer "translators' probable understandings of their own actions, and compares these with the reasoning" provided by various theories of translation, assessing as case studies Chaucer's use of translation in CT (especially…

Focuses on the "complex textual contingency" of the figure of Theseus in the "history of mythographical discourse," exploring "the fragmentary, fluid and polymorphous nature of mythology" in a wide variety of medieval and early modern texts--English,…

Uses the "two models" of "genealogy and thing theory" to explore "the generation of meaning in medieval texts," addressing issues of differences between the "Chaucerian" tradition and the "Piers Plowman" tradition and the processes of their…

Explores how Marie de France, the 'Orfeo' poet, Thomas Chestre, Chaucer, and John Lydgate "tell stories about the possibilities and problems of vernacular retelling . . . [and] imagine and enact a type of authorship--and a type of authority--based in…

Argues "that poets after Chaucer employ the dream form not simply in imitation of their master but rather to assert for themselves the same freedom to write imaginative fictions that Chaucer found in the form," exploring Chaucer's dream visions,…

"[I]nvestigates literary and pictorial manuscripts on the subject pf alchemy in conjunction with the theories surrounding sequential art," i.e., "comics theory," considering selected works, from CYPT to modern graphic novels. Opens with a "close…

Explores how "multiple modes of discourse" about the body--medical, philosophical, religious, and courtly--underlie works by Chaucer, Dunbar, and Henryson, arguing that CT, through its multiplicity of voices, "demonstrates fundamental medieval…

Treats GP among a number of other works in Middle English, arguing that its uses of estates satire align with notions of individual responsibility found in Henry Bracton's legal discourse, "De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae." Also considers MLT…

Assesses secular misogamy as a topos "exploited in early Western literature for two fundamental purposes: propaganda and entertainment," dividing it into four categories: Pagan, Ascetic, Philosophic, and General. Discusses WBP in the latter category…

Argues that "Chaucer's decision to write in Middle-English . . . was consistent with an intellectual movement that was trying to give back to European vernaculars the prestige necessary to a genuine cultural production, which eventually led to the…

Demonstrates that "Chaucer's portrayal of fin' amors is informed by Arabic learning in the related fields of medicine, natural philosophy, astrology and alchemy, disseminated through Latin translations from the Iberian Peninsula in particular."…

Argues that "fifteenth-century alchemical poets, George Ripley and Thomas Norton, perceived themselves to be 'Chaucerian' in far deeper ways than has been recognized," joining "author, reader and pilgrim on an essentially hermeneutical journey to…

Examines anxieties about the status of the vernacular and cultural identity in late medieval England, particularly as evident in "exotic documents" found in Middle English narratives. Includes discussion of such documents in "Alexander and Didimus,"…

Defines "medieval female voice" as "any instance of thought or speech by a female character" and "evaluates the alterations made (by Chaucer and scribes) to five Italian-sourced female voices" in KnT (Emelye and Ypolita), MerT (May), FranT (Dorigen),…

Explores the "sense of guilt and uncertainty about the value of creative literature" in Chaucer's works, particularly as it generates "expansive, questioning poetics" in HF and "problematises the principle of allegory" in the final fragments of CT,…

Outlines "the history and theory of BDSM [bondage and discipline, domination and submission, and sadism and masochism]" and explores "concepts of fantasy, performance, consent, and eroticized violence" in "Sir Gowther," "The Book of Margery Kempe,"…

"[I]nvestigates three medieval manuscript collections--compiled in the 14th and 15th centuries in Herefordshire, Derbyshire and East Anglia, respectively--that are significant in their similarly implied female readerships, their thematic treatment of…