Browse Items (16470 total)

Furrow surveys medieval verbal and visual depictions of the love-tryst beneath the tree, focusing on the duping of Mark by Tristan and Isolde. Adaptations of the scene in romances include MerT and its analogue, "The Comedy of Lydia."

Bleeth surveys critical responses to SqT for the ways they reflect assumptions about and attitudes toward the East as a cultural Other. Considers criticism from Thomas Warton (1778) through recent efforts to come to terms with and go beyond Edward…

Similarities between magic and tale-telling and between the clerk of Orléans and the Franklin recur in FranT, despite the Franklin's attempts to distance them. As the clerk seeks to educate Aurelius, the Franklin tries to teach the Squire.

"Kayrrud," the home of Arveragus in FranT, refers not to a "red fort," as Tatlock suggested (1914), but to "Kairiud," a fishing village "one mile east of Penmarch Head." Chaucer's knowledge of Middle Breton was more precise than commentators have…

In its concerns with social rank and professional distractions, the marriage of Arveragus and Dorigen in FranT mirrors that of Chaucer and Philippa. The theme of the Tale (that true love cannot be maintained without outside considerations) might…

Dorigen of FranT is "more important as a figure that reflects back on men and their desires than as a distinct character in herself." Englade applies Georges Bataille's "expenditure" theory to show that there is "no place for Dorigen within the bonds…

Kennedy analyzes Benjamin Franklin's self-presentation in his Memoir, commenting on his validation of his surname by reference to Chaucer's GP sketch of the Franklin and other early sources.

Contrasts FranT with analogous medieval accounts of wife exchange to argue that Chaucer's "unusual" version "testifies to Arveragus's regard for his wife and to Aurelius's regard for Averagus's regard for his wife." Other versions testify to male…

FranT raises problems rather than providing a solution in the Marriage Group. Like ClT, it poses "a problematic marriage agreement" at the outset; like MerT, it shows that disastrous consequences can result from introducing non-marital love into a…

In light of speech-act theory and the conventions of courtly literature, Dorigen's playful promise to Aurelius in FranT is not binding. Aurelius's own interpretation of the promise is willfully self-interested.

Far from being rambling, hasty, or incoherent, Dorigen's lament on faithful and faithless wives is a careful working out of the solution to her own dilemma. Starting with stories from Jerome's "Against Jovinian," she develops a favorable, Augustinian…

Medieval iconography of the monkey physician examining a urinal reflects concern about contemporary physicians but may also evoke associations with Christ as salvific doctor. Hardwick briefly considers aspects of Phy-PardL and the Ellesmere portrait…

PhyT and Pearl both explore the assumption that the communal and anagogical can subsume the individual and ethical, an assumption underlying Fredric Jameson's historicist theorizing. The ending of PhyT indicates the "hermeneutic limits" of virgin…

Surveys critics who argue that the Wife of Bath murdered her fourth (and perhaps her fifth) husband, compares details of WBP with those of the trial of Alice Kytelar in 1324, and suggests that the Kytelar trial may have influenced Chaucer's creation…

Reeves traces the evolution of old wives' tales (including WBT) and assesses how such tales represent fancy and superstition in early scientific theories of the Copernican system. However, the tales also promote the theory of extraterrestrial life,…

"Daungerous," the term Alisoun uses to describe Jankyn's love, reflects an ambiguous relation between courtly love and marriage; canon and civil law clarify the nature of physical and psychological violence in WBP and FranT.

Reader-response analysis of various dramatic monologues. Shaw focuses on the dramatic monologues of Robert Browning and other Victorians but clarifies the functions of deception, self-deception, casuistry, irony, double irony, and Sartre's concept of…

Compares the Wife of Bath's speech in WBP and Otto Jespersen's folk-linguistic stereotyping of women's language, showing that Chaucer replicates stereotypes of women's language, ultimately undermining the Wife of Bath's authority.

Considers SumP to be Chaucer's experiment in and assessment of the genre of the vision of the afterlife, with "possible echoes of the Visio Tnugdali" (Vision of Tundale).

Jones surveys in medieval and early modern art and literature the figures of starving and fatted beasts that eat, respectively, obedient wives and complaisant husbands, presented as background to Chaucer's reference to Chichevache in ClT. Includes…

Reads the confusions, contradictions, and ambiguities of ClT and its Envoy in light of feminist critical discourse.

Burger explores how MerT scrutinizes developments in class and gender identities and valuations of marital love and subjectivity that grew out of twelfth-century Gregorian Reform. In direct contrast to WBPT (and in response to ClT), the Merchant…

Osborn explores how Chaucer used an astrolabe in his composition of CT and explains the use of the instrument in celestial navigation; includes a cutout astrolabe. Throughout most of CT, Chaucer's references to time and place are realistic. Such…

Pugh describes a course plan that focuses on genre expectations and reversals, concentrating on romance in KnT and on the fabliaux of CT.

Sheridan explores ways that language is like money in acts of interpretation, examining the role of the Host in CT, readers' valuations of various tales, patronage and interpretive control, and the "mercantile" strategies of May (MerT) and the Wife…