Browse Items (16470 total)

The violent anti-Semitism of PrT attracts critical attention, but a variety of brief, positive depictions of Jews occurs elsewhere in CT, reflecting the dynamic nature of medieval attitudes.

Surveys critical commentary on the absence and presence of Jews in late medieval English society and literature,gauging the state of discussions of works such as PrT,the Croxton Play of the Sacrament,and others.

Read as symptoms of a "childlike" individual "dealing with a number of psychosexual developmental issues," the Prioress's personal habits and narrative performance register anxiety not only about boundaries of the individual human body but also about…

Explores anti-Semitism and modern response to PrT in light of recurring concern with humans (the Prioress, Mary, the clergeon, and the Jews) possessed or penetrated by superior beings. Readers are overwhelmed by the desire for "piercing sweetness,"…

Explores how liturgical training and practice, particularly the interrelated devotional activities of singing and reading, affected literacy in late medieval England. Lay devotional ritual became separated from clerical practice, and definitions of…

Jager contends that medieval English poetry occupied a "hybrid" oral/written cultural space and that the poems "posit an artisanal, poetic masculinity." She uses Th, along with "Piers Plowman," "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," and other works,…

Purdie explores "how and why" tail-rhyme romance developed in Middle English and defines the "temporal and geographical limits" of the subgenre. The book includes a version of Purdie's "The Implications of Manuscript Layout in Chaucer's Tale of Sir…

Chaucer uses Th to "debunk his own textual authority" and subvert patriarchal power, enacting the "death of the author" that is completed in Ret.

A social history of Dartmouth and the lower Dart river valley; includes the suggestion that William Smale was the model for Chaucer's GP description of the Shipman.

Rice studies late fourteenth-century vernacular prose devotional guides, with attention to their relationship with works by Chaucer and Langland. Wycliffite writings and changes in religious discipline affected notions of how to live the "best life,"…

Compares Chaucer's PrT with Alfonso X's "Cantigas de Santa Maria" (no. 6),analyzing them in detail (from plot to prosody), and providing parallel editions of the two texts. In Spanish.

Studies the function of medieval inscribed or letter-shaped jewels and similar objects, referring to Chaucer's Prioress and to TC.

In PrT, uncanniness and the eventual wounding of the clergeon are necessary to render the clergeon holy and Christlike. His experience is close to that represented in miracle plays exploring the Slaughter of the Innocents.

The Prioress aligns herself with the widow in her Tale and with the Virgin Mary. Although the clergeon is like Christ in his challenge to Jewish tradition, PrT is concerned with female power as well as with cultural prejudice.

Kendrick considers secular and religious contexts in which the smile of the Prioress may be understood.

A significant Jewish presence echoes in the wide-ranging geographies of PrT (Asia),Th (fairyland), and the Monk's stories of Peter of Spain and Antiochus (Judea). Chaucer evokes a sophisticated awareness of Jewishness that mitigates the Prioress's…

The Host's retort to the Pardoner at the close of PardT reinforces a connection between the terms and concepts of testicles (false or otherwise) and relics (false or otherwise). A trilingual collection (French, Latin, and English) of terms along with…

PardT shows the polysemous aspects of gluttony as a sin, suggesting that gluttons are similar to heretics, who use the mouth to deny sacred truths. In contrast to the Parson, the Pardoner embodies the idea that "peccata oris" are not confined to…

A recognition of the Pardoner as a "parodic relic custodian" calls for a fresh look at his sexuality--relic custodians were to be celibate--and casts into relief the tension in CT between restrictive ecclesiastical power and "lay desire" for access…

Pedagogical commentary on PardPT, based on A. C. Spearing's 1965 edition (text not included). McCarthy emphasizes the "gothic" elements of PardPT and summarizes the poem in sections, offering section-by-section commentary, along with sidebar glosses,…

Studies the Pardoner's and Wife of Bath's "deviancy" in light of late medieval theological and academic discourses, particularly the commentaries and summas of the scholastics, Lollard treatises ,and reactions to Lollard writings and trials. Neither…

Stockton reads the Pardoner as a "cynic" in a Marxist context: one who "submit[s] fully to an ideological structure despite knowing better." Contrasts the Pardoner's queerness with his cynicism, asking,"how queer can the Pardoner be when he guards an…

ShT reflects Chaucer's belief that "the dominance of a husband over his wife is too strict" in traditional marriages. Private games threaten to open out into public scandal.

A biography of John Hawley that concludes by arguing (pp. 147-55) that Hawley was at the center of a number of satirical allusions in Chaucer's GP description of the Shipman. Chaucer depicts a professional mariner, which Hawley was not, but the…

Chaucer, having established an egalitarian marriage ideal at the beginning of FranT, explores how such an ideal would be tested by real-world circumstances.