Browse Items (16470 total)

PrT and SNT mirror each other but "with a telling difference." The two stand in relation to each other as Old Testament figura to New Testament fulfillment (the shadow and substance of the title). Ironically, in this figural scheme, PrT takes the…

Examines as ritual murder the death of the clergeon in PrT. In Japanese.

Bauer assesses formulaic or stereotypic depictions of Jews in "Cursor Mundi," Chaucer's PrT, Gower's "Confessio Amantis" (7.3207-3360), "Elene," "The Siege of Jerusalem," passion treatises, and The Croxton Play of the Sacrament.

A study of the "reiteration, instability and changing valence of the Jewish image as inscribed in medieval English books," focusing on four generic narratives: the Jew of Tewkesbury, the Marian miracle of the boy singer, the cult of Robert of Bury…

As reflected in ShT, medieval urban space allows the powerful to exert political influence by converting capital into noncommercial culture.

Read in the light of late medieval letter collections and conduct manuals for women, the comedy of ShT springs from a recognition of the merchant's wife's "clever manipulation of her roles: as hostess, social networker, housekeeper, business…

Trigg addresses relationships among the reading audience, the pilgrim audience, and the "lewed peple" of PardPT. Set against the GP description of the Parson and his flock, the Pardoner's description of his preaching to the people may indicate their…

Late medieval literary and historical attitudes toward pardoners suggest that the depictions in "Piers Plowman" and PardPT are exaggerated. Shaffern documents ecclesiastical efforts to control abuse of the office.

Argues that written texts are not the only valid sources of PhyT and acknowledges the need to consider "remembered texts, semantic fields, and pictorial images" - "intertexts" theorized by Michael Riffaterre.

Wicher tallies a number of folktale motifs in FranT and argues that they are rationalized or obscured in ways that qualify the exemplary value of the Tale. Central is the motif of the "rash promise given to a supernatural suitor," with Arveragus,…

Nowlin contends that FranT "offers an interpretation of the forces that shape the ability to imagine beyond exempla." Draws on Victor Turner's notions of liminality to discuss the concern with genre as frame in FranT, which shows how frames of…

Aurelius's comparison of himself to the nymph Echo early in FranT enables glimpses of Narcissus in Dorigen and emphasizes the importance of speech and interpretation in the Tale: in particular, Aurelius's Echo-like interpretations of Dorigen's…

In FranT, Chaucer presents a "moral dilemma that might be described as scholastic in its contrived intractability." The "quaestio disputanda" posed at the end of FranT compels readers to confront the Tale's irresolvable legal complexities of…

Explores gift-giving in Part 5 of CT, from the magical gifts given to Ghengis Khan in SqT to the concern with generosity that ends FranT. Uses Derridean notions of gifts and exchange to argue that the sequence is Chaucer's means to "erase…

Considered in the light of writings by thirteenth-century ophthalmologist Benvenutus Grassus, January's blindness in MerT is no sudden infirmity. With his admitted habit of "overindulgence" in women, food, and drink, January has been working on…

A detailed comparison of the Job story and Boccaccio's Decameron 10.10. Boccaccio's novella is seen as a variation of the biblical Job story that lacks the justification of God's divine attributes. Schöpflin argues that Boccaccio and subsequent…

Patterson reads ClT in light of negotiations over the marriage of Richard II and Isabelle of France in 1396 and of the texts surrounding those negotiations, especially those concerned with the ideology of sacral kingship. Chaucer knew of the marriage…

Goodwin explores the practical problems of source study - terminology and the constraints of publication - in relation to ClT. Comments on Boccaccio's and Philippe de Mézières' Griselda stories as "sources of invention" for Chaucer's version.

Frese reads water, dressing, and "suckling" imagery in Boccaccio, Petrarch, and ClT as vestiges of Dante's concern in "De vulgari eloquentia" with using "vernacular" language for "literature of lasting value."

Denny-Brown assesses the vacillations between sartorial richesse and rudenesse in ClT, examining the gender and class implications of Griselda's dressing, undressing, and redressing and counterpointing Walter's attitudes toward clothing and material…

If reading is a transformative act, then Griselda's unwavering "reading" of Walter as a loving husband ultimately transforms him so that Walter's will conforms with hers. Thus, her association with the Clerk (especially as aligned against the…

Allusions in SumT to the "silent canon" - the clerical practice of offering the Eucharistic consecration prayers silently - open a window on "lay-clerical relations," exposing the politics governing access to the secrets of the Eucharist. Through its…

Studying SumT with John Gay's 1717 poem "An Answer to the Sompner's Prologue of Chaucer" reveals a continuum of greed in SumT, moving from goods of use value, to coins of exchange value, to excrement and insubstantial air, even as Chaucer satirizes…

Phillips explores verbal, narrative, and thematic parallels between FrT and Robin Hood tales such as "Robin Hood and Guy of Gisburne." Emphases on "grenewode," archery, disguise, commercialism, ecclesiastical corruption, oppression of the poor, and…

While the knight of WBT returns from his quest with the word that saves his life - "sovereynetee" - he never understands its meaning: "independence and self-government." The wedding-night conversation between the knight and the "wyf" demonstrates her…