Browse Items (16470 total)

Considers Spurgeon's work on the history of Chaucer criticism in the context of Spurgeon's career as a teacher and her role as a leader in seeking full standing for women in the academy.

Postcolonial analysis of the Dido account in LGW reveals that when Dido accuses Aeneas of ruining her reputation, Chaucer simultaneously accuses Virgil of "epistemic imperialism," a function of the "unreliability of representation." Hamaguchi…

By representing the narrator of CT first as a disembodied authority and then as a storyteller in the pilgrimage game, Chaucer explores the parameters of voice, gender, and authority. The perception of gender in speech is shown to be a social…

Fifteen essays by various authors examine ways of reading tales in CT in terms of relationships to a particular literary mode, whether theater, narrative, or poetry. The collection includes an introduction by the editor. For the individual essays,…

Focuses on the ordinatio and implications of illustrations to CT (apart from those in the Ellesmere MS): the "generic 'author' image" found in MS Lansdowne 851, MS Bodley 686, and the "Devonshire" MS; the portrait of the Friar in MS Rawlinson poet.…

Explores how the character Theseus in KnT does and does not embody principles of political philosophy found in Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy." Combining "idealism and political exigency," Theseus fulfills the "composite model of an ideal"…

A series of studies focusing on depictions of the Orient and people from the Orient in medieval romances: MLT, Dido and Cleopatra from LGW, SqT, "Floris and Blauncheflur," and "Le Bone Florence." The introduction concentrates on how contact with the…

Argues that Chaucer had direct knowledge of Vendôme's text and suggests a possible manuscript source of it: Florence, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Pluteus 33.31.

Feminist narratological analysis of WBPT reveals that the Wife's arguments, based in traditional misogyny, overwhelm this misogyny through dynamic engagement of it.

Explores issues of persona, authorship, and reception in Th and Mel, focusing on the links between Tales, the Host's role, and the "evolution" of the pilgrim Chaucer.

Herold reads WBT as an "individuation myth" in which the knight gains "wisdom and self-empowerment" in his encounters with the anima, manifested in the "triple-aspect of the Great Mother Archetype": maiden, queen, and loathly lady.

The medieval conceptualization of tragedy has its roots in classical tradition, especially Seneca as mediated by Boethius. Herold surveys classical, patristic, and medieval ideas of tragedy and the tragic, exploring how Chaucer, among others,…

Structuralist analysis of how metaphors develop into themes in MerT and, in turn, "steer the plot."

In the context of a broader discussion of late-medieval depictions of people reading, Driver mentions illustrations that depict Chaucer reading. Fourteen illustrations

Dutton reads the Prioress and the Second Nun as paired opposites: one childish, the other adult. In PrPT, the Creator is subordinated to his creatures, who seem "unaware of the effects of the Incarnation." SNPT reasserts the proper order, in which…

Eagleton identifies a fragment of Astr washed from MS 358 in the Royal College of Physicians, London. Reproduces the explicit that names Chaucer as author; six photographs; and two tables.

Eaton connects various uses of the word "conscience" in Chaucer's works with the social classes of the characters with whom the word is associated and with gender differences such as the structuring of physical space.

British Library MS Additional 37049 contains a variant of the third stanza of Sted. The most striking feature is the translation from rhyme royal into couplets. The stanza suggests memorial transmission.

Discusses John Stow's 1561 edition of Chaucer's works, in which Stow includes Lydgate's "Siege of Thebes" to expand Chaucer's canon. The inclusion helped shape the idea of Chaucer in the Renaissance, with far-reaching consequences for subsequent…

The twin rubrics of succession and invention guide Statius's response to Virgil and, in turn, Boccaccio's response to Statius, Chaucer's responses to Boccaccio, and Lydgate's response to Chaucer. By exploiting the silences of their predecessors, the…

Summary information about the lives and works of English authors; includes Chaucer's biography and introductory presentation of CT.

Describes a pedagogy for teaching ClT in comparison to the Griselda story in Christine de Pizan's The Book of the City of Ladies--as part of a course that treats "Chaucer in context" as a means to encourage students to engage actively in their…

Farrell argues that clear differentiation among types of analogues may enable us to analyze Chaucer's works with more subtlety. A "source" is a work we are certain Chaucer knew; a "hard analogue" is a work that was available to him; a "soft source"…

Federico combines historicism and psychoanalysis to explore the "fascination with Troy" in late-medieval England as a "symbolic appropriation" and a means of establishing English identity. Examines the gendered representations of Troy in Gower's "Vox…

FranT describes a true-love marriage in Boethian terms and impossible contradictions, in a language that strains for comprehensibility amidst paradox and conditions that tend to undo prior terms. Stability and union replace oppositions, dualities,…