Bradfield, Joanna Lee Scott.
DAI A73.05 (2012): n.p.
In the context of spheres of male and female acts of treason, suggests that women's disloyalty (e.g., Criseyde) was typically seen as simultaneously political and romantic, whereas a male traitor's action could be more easily compartmentalized, as in…
Places HF in the intellectual and philosophical contexts of its era, particularly the tradition of Boethius and Wyclif, arguing that Chaucer supports the existence of universals.
In an effort to rehabilitate the medieval romance, argues that Th, when read through the prism of the Auchinleck MS, shows more affection for the form than is generally believed.
Presents PrT as one of several texts that are considered as performed/heard experiences, and as instruments of "late medieval identities and communities."
Craun, Edwin C.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Discusses how the late medieval Church encouraged and participated in "fraternal corrections," and establishes connections with major English reformist writings, including "The Book of Margery Kempe" and "Piers Plowman." Brief mention of Chaucer's…
Bertolet, Craig E.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 33 (2011): 183-218.
Reads CYP and ManPT in light of Agamben's theories of sovereignty and exclusion and de Certeau's notion of a "person in-between," considering as well several instances of slander and accusation in late-medieval London records. London, the Host, and…
Fahrenback, William
Essays in Medieval Studies 27 (2011): i-x.
This introduction to a collection of essays on "Representing the Middle Ages" begins by providing an overview of representations of experience in the NPT. After presenting an overview of key criticism, the article asserts that the tale seeks to…
The program of illustrations in the unique witness to "La Crónica Troyana de Alfonso XI" inadvertently undermines Alphonso XI's efforts to situate his people and himself within a "heroic, even mythical, past" and predicts the tragedy that would…
In the context of medieval humoral symptomatology, Chaucer's Pardoner fits the profile of a phlegmatic male. This diagnosis explains, in turn, his corrupt character, for "incontinence, excess, deceitfulness, cowardice, and negligence" in a man were…
Green Richard Firth.
Chaucer Review 45 (2011): 340-48.
While vernacular precedents for Chaucer's satirical portrait of a pardoner have so far eluded scholars, five Latin exempla in a fourteenth-century French Dominican's collection, "Scala coeli," suggest that "the pardoner was already a type of the…
Carrillo Linares, María José.
SELIM 17 (2010): 91-110.
Analysis of PhyT and its connection with the storyteller through the notions of authority, sovereignty and power. In the post-plague context, when doctors had become broadly distrusted, a story that stresses these aspects would help to restore the…
Pugh, Tison.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 33 (2011): 149-81.
Assesses Jacques Lacan's and Slovoj Žižek's discussions of courtly love, focusing on the hermaphroditic potential of the Courtly Lady, and discusses FranT for the ways that hermaphroditic and masochistic tendencies inhabit the main characters'…
Czarnowus, Anna.
Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 47 (2011-12): 115-28.
Although the SqT draws on missionary accounts of Mongol culture in which religion and magic, the "holy" and the "unholy," are seen as confused, the Tale itself treats magic as something manmade, a technological marvel, eliciting admiration and…
Laskaya, Anne.
Noreen Giffney, Michelle M. Sauer, and Diane Watt, eds. The Lesbian Premodern (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 35-47.
Considers the validity and applicability of the critical concepts of "reading lesbian" and "reading queer," briefly suggesting the implications of imagining lesbian and queer audiences for readings of MerT.
Farrell, Thomas J.
Medieval Perspectives 23 (2011 for 2008): 31-42.
Unlike "free-indirect discourse," Bakhtin's "hybrid discourse" readily allows analysis of written and spoken language in narrative, especially in texts before 1900. The portrait of the Squire, hybridizing both estates satire and "Le Roman de la…
Farrell, Thomas J.
Medieval Perspectives 18 (2011 for 2003): 113-31.
Analyzes varying treatments of the "sergeant" character in Chaucer, the Anonymous French, Petrarch, and Boccaccio by considering the character's rhetorical effect in each. Rather than imitating a character either cruel (as in the French) or not-cruel…
Considering such works as "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida," and PardPT, the author identifies finitude and nothingness as the roots of despair in late medieval and early modern works, as well as in modern…
Historical analysis of early women's speech; describes early modern England's regulations of women's speech and women's subversive strategies to represent themselves as subjects in masculine discourses (including court depositions). Examines speech…
Nicknames for geometric propositions occur in TC ("dulcarnon," "flemyng of wrecches") and one seems to be at play at the end of SumT ("figura demonis"), where the squire's "natural" solution to the problem of dividing the fart opposes the…
Studies the tradition in which God speaks through humans and the proto-reformation implications of literary texts where the laity use speech usually reserved for priests. Chapter 4, "Cursed Speakers," considers the carter's and old woman's curses in…
Discusses fairies and elves within medieval romances and folklore. Analyzes Chaucer's use of "fayrye" in the MerT, "fairy mistresses" in Th, and the "fairy woman" in the WBT.
References to "Lameth" in WBT and SqT comprise links in a sturdy chain connecting the tragic actions of Shakespeare's prince of Denmark to Lamech, a "(pseudo-)biblical figure associated with murder, rage, and vengeance."
Considers WBPT and SNPT, along with woman writers of the 13th-15th centuries, as part of the development of a female "subject consciousness." Also examines Grisilde in ClT.
