Browse Items (16376 total)

Argues that Proserpina's angry response to Pluto in MerT (4.2264–70) "highlights the historical relationship between Chaucer's depiction of women's speech, medieval grammatical [classroom] instruction, and theories of delivery" that derive from…

Investigates the performative nature of Deschamps's "relatively faithful French translation," "Geta et Amphitrion," and proposes an occasion when it might have been performed. Contrasts Deschamps's treatment of Plautus's Latin original with those of…

Tabulates and analyzes the "gender-based" nouns used of the marital couple in MerT, compared with uses elsewhere in CT, focusing on uses of "wyf" and "housbonde" (61 versus 4 uses in MerT), and on the locution of "taking" a wife. Such usages connect…

Reads ClT closely as a "fundamentally enigmatic parable" that, as part of the "glossing group" of the CT, focuses on interpretation and hermeneutic resistance. Chaucer alternately abbreviates and amplifies his Petrarchan source "so that interpretive…

Treats "the operations and qualities of fictional minds" in ClT, "as well as the narrative means through which they are conveyed," examining Griselda, Walter, and the "group consciousness" of the Saluzzan people in light of "modern cognitive…

Argues that Chaucer raises questions in ClT about relations between poverty and the nature of the self, gauging the extent to which Griselda's agency, selflessness, and lack of "things" are factors in Walter's "inhuman" treatment of her, and asking…

In a chapter entitled "Medieval and Early Modern Devils: Names and Images" (pp. 45–74), assesses the devil-dressed-in-green of FrT and its associations with the fairies in WBT; also comments on the characters in PardT and CYT "who are already…

Analyzes the grotesque Bahktinian realism of inversions and bodily functions in medieval narratives; includes comments on the "prayer-belch" and farting in SumT and on ass-kissing and farting in MilT, compared and contrasted with analogous materials.

Portrays the symbolic and naturalistic use of the cat and applies these concepts to SumT and its critique of the mendicant orders.

Looks at how both erasure and the anxiety that erasure produces in material culture are revealed in FrT and SumT.

Examines FrT and SumT in the "context of the late medieval vision of the afterlife," and argues that the "two tales tell how one is constantly in the dangerous liminal situation between damnation and salvation, between being physically ravished to…

Summarizes differences between oral and literate communication, describes CT as a product of a transitional "manuscript culture," and discusses how WBP lends verisimilitude to the speaking voice of WBT, an example of Chaucer's virtuosity in a "time…

Uses WBT as a case study in the development of circumcision's use as a metaphor for situations ranging from shifting of intellectual ground to the process of reading itself.

Asks to what extent CT and Boccaccio's "Decameron" advocate "women's equality," exploring female laughter in these works, and focusing on Boccaccio's Pampinea and on the Wife of Bath as a "comic performer who has an intent to play."

Examines eloquence of the Wife of Bath, Criseyde, and Prudence. Focuses on Chaucer's intention in creating these female characters.

Studies the "role of stigma in determining the social value of a lone woman of loathly proportions or perceptions," discussing a range of texts, medieval to postmodern, including two chapters on WBPT that assess the loathly lady as the "alter ego" of…

Investigates the "discourses of [rape] survival" in medieval literature and its historical contexts, addressing the aftereffects of rape as they are depicted in saints' lives, anchoritic literature, accounts of raped wives (particularly Lucretia in…

Contrasts Custance of MLT with her source in Trevet's "Cronicles," exploring the depictions of the sea in the two poems as well, arguing that women and water are tamed by "providential control" in Chaucer, especially when seen in light of Alatiel of…

The Ptolemaic universe of MLT should have a still center, but neither this Tale nor the CT as a whole seems to reflect "a single interpretive order." Thematic and tonal threads pull in different directions, as if the Tale harbored an anticipation of…

Explores Chaucer's reservations about the reliability of written documents by examining Donegild's counterfeit letters in MLT and Thomas Woodstock, duke of Gloucester's "Confession", written in 1397. Examines problems of written documents implicated…

Explores three examples of literary representation of cultural contact across language boundaries: an episode from the "Doctor Who" television series, MLT, and the BBC adaptation of MLT, identifying parallels among cross-linguistic contact,…

Argues that MLT and MLE are "fundamentally concerned with the transmission of affect." The tale "dramatizes how affect operates as a physical force that realigns individual and collective identities," while the narrator's style, combined with…

Assesses the uses of late Antique historiography in MLT and in Gower's Prologue to his "Confessio Amantis," comparing Gower's depiction of the late Roman empire and that of Otto of Freising's "Chronica," and arguing that the ultimate source of MLT is…

Proposes that the Cook is suffering from illness, which challenges the traditional interpretation of the Cook as a drunkard.

Reconsiders the role of the clerks' northern dialect in RvT as well as the Reeve's Norfolk dialect, paying particular attention to the fading of the former within the tale.