Browse Items (16443 total)

Expresses concerns about contemporary higher education--from "prevailing careerism to the overall decline in literary reading"--and encourages "Chaucerian values" among university administrators.

Critical response to essays on MkT by Ann W. Astell, Terry Jones, Henry Ansgar Kelly, Stephen Knight, and Richard Neuse.

Reassesses the role and value of the falcon and the mechanical horse in SqT. Demonstrates through these depictions that SqT creates "interspecies and intrasexual relationships of care outside of the gendered human norms of chivalric romance."

Examines feminist and antifeminist readings Criseyde, arguing that--like Chaucer, who appropriates his sources, and like his narrator, who constantly negotiates and repositions himself in relation to Lollius--Criseyde performs, mimes, and parodies…

Anatomizes the motif of resistance to love "across the chronology and variety of medieval English romance, from twelfth-century Anglo-Norman lais to fifteenth-century prose works," exploring "ways in which it reinforces or subverts contemporary…

Discusses the "images" of several scenes in HF, following V. A. Kolve's article "Chaucer and the Visual Arts" (1975).

TC scholarship is reviewed. It is important to read TC in terms of the Christian view of life.

Argues that in reading BD medieval audiences would also have reread Machaut's "Fonteinne Amoureuse" and recalled other works by Chaucer's predecessor. Chaucer's derivative version of the account of Ceyx and Alcyone "thematizes the story as a…

Twelve essays on Spenser's knowledge of and uses of Chaucer as source or inspiration. The introduction by the editors summarizes earlier critical studies, describes the essays, and asserts that the essays together "characterise the relationships…

Defines allegory by structural features of plot rather than by content, surveying theory and history of the genre from the classics to contemporary criticism. Briefly considers BD and PF as allegories.

Shows that Lucan's "Bellum civile," the medieval "accessus" tradition, and "vitae Lucani" together depict the Roman poet as a "violated female," victimized by his "tyrannical emperor," and abruptly silenced, arguing that this legacy influenced LGW…

At the crux of chronicle and romance, Geoffrey of Monmouth's "Historia" provides much of the basis for later literature. The work emphasizes women not only as child bearers but also as speakers who could uphold or deny legitimacy. Barefield discusses…

Interprets four manuscript versions of ClT (here retitled "The Legend of the Litel Clergeon and the Jews") that occur outside the context of CT, "excise" Chaucer's authorship, and adjust their temporalities, addressing "their own distinct identities,…

Discusses John Gower's "Vox Clamantis," with passing mention of Chaucer.

Edwards surveys attempts to "historicize" the representation of Middle English texts, from black letter type to computer transcription, focusing on the nineteenth-century efforts of Frederic Madden. Includes recurrent references representing the…

As part of a larger discussion of medieval estate management and its literary representations, Morris examines the character of Piers Plowman and Chaucer's Oswald the Reeve.

Moore shows that medieval poems (including Chaucer's) "exploit the less-determined systems of medieval speech marking for aesthetic and rhetorical purposes."

The virtuous pagan motif plays a minor thematic role but an important structural function in the scene of Troilus's ascent at the end of TC.

The Knight, in representing the gods, omits any reference to the castration of Saturn in order to justify the ascendancy of Jupiter, the authority of Theseus, and the political situation of the later fourteenth century, "a dark time in which…

Eleven essays about literary depictions of rape in Chaucer, Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, Latin comedies, Ovidian narratives, and the Philomel story. Includes an introduction by the editors, an afterword by Christopher Cannon, and a revised reprint…

Comments on the "shadowy slippage" between science and magic in FranT and the deceptive practices evident in CYPT suggesting that "Chaucer explored magic and science" in order to distinguish between "phenomena that can be controlled" and those that…

With CT, Chaucer raises many feminist cultural issues, exploring gender stereotyping and the limits it imposes on individuals. The men of KnT contrast with those of MilT and MerT, and all diverge from the overtly Christian ParsT. Exemplary female…

Studies Wynken de Worde's use of copy texts for his edition of CT. Although de Worde used Caxton's second edition, he also turned to an undetermined manuscript or manuscripts to improve the ordinatio of the work. The changes do not, however, indicate…

In CYPT, one finds a "rhetorical demystification of alchemy's textual mystification of work and material production" and a commentary on counterfeiting and the impotence of alchemy as a "projection of masculine fears of sexual impotence."

Discusses theoretical approaches to the study of Breton lays, including gender and postcolonial studies. Includes brief references to FranT.