Browse Items (16471 total)

Chaucer enhances the rhetorical authority of SqT by following classical authorities, using figures such as Pegasus, the Trojan horse, and Sinon's persuasive deception as models and figures for the poem's rhetorical operation. Chaucer understood and…

Physical and mechanical marvels suggest a mechanistic rather than a supernatural universe in SqT, Gower's version of the Alexander legend, and Sir John Mandeville's eastern marvels.

School-text edition of the GP description of the Franklin and FranPT, accompanied, on facing pages, by extensive glossing and pedagogical commentary and discussion questions. Includes brief essays on pertinent topics, including gentilesse, astronomy…

Commerce in automatons, mechanical contrivances, and other marvels or mirabilia in late-medieval Europe diminished the wonder of such objects and encouraged scepticism. Chaucer's FranT and SqT rationalize the marvels they present in ways that…

Positioned midway between aristocracy and the lower orders of society, the Franklin appropriately tells a story that emphasizes the necessity and correctness of the social order as he (and Chaucer) would have understood it. Thus, the…

Fourteenth-century English Breton lays, such as "Sir Degaré," "Sir Orfeo," and FranT, displace "Celtic" otherworlds to Brittainy and depict them as exotic, feminine, and supernatural-places of self-discovery that contrast with the domestic and…

A variety of ethical systems--Christian, Boethian, Epicurean, Ciceronian, etc.--were available to Chaucer's audience, and he engages these systems in ways that enable the audience to observe and choose among them. Like commentators on Epicurean…

Death is preferred to rape in both PhyT and "Titus Andonicus" because both works take for granted the notion that rape results in pollution or disease. In this way, the works contribute to negative views of women and their bodies in Western…

Ishino attempts to unravel enigmatic aspects of PhyT, especially the death of Virginia.

The reception of the Pardoner can be more fully understood by examining medieval preachers' and orators' uses of examples, or stories that would "excite" an audience to behave virtuously. By "laying bare" his own selfish desires, the Pardoner elicits…

The Sarum liturgy provokes powerful emotional response, as evident in PardT and in "Piers Plowman" (Passus 15; Passus 19).

Kelly re-considers the Pardoner's sexuality in light of biblical imagery, medieval medical lore, and fifteenth-century reception of PardT, arguing that implications of effeminacy in GP suggest neither homosexuality nor sterility but sexual…

The Pardoner's "misunderstanding" of gluttony as a sin "becomes emblematic of his inability to appreciate significance in general." Lynch discusses digestive imagery from medieval commentaries on memory and meditation to clarify the nature of the…

In KnT, Theseus is "devoted to chivalry" and yet ineffectual in his attempts to achieve order. Through him, the Knight indicates the need for chivalry to undergo reform.

For medieval poets, the "hyperreality of musical instruments" was "more significant" than was their reality. In "Beowulf," the harp signifies Hrothgar's agenda of political conquest and order; in Machaut's "Remedy of Fortune," the "instruments…

Argues that "astromye" in MilT (1.3451 and 3457) is an authorial malapropism.

Mann explores Nicholas's verbal manipulation of John in MilT, the portrait of Alison, and the body language of the kiss scene (and some analogous fabliaux), arguing that language, imagination, and physical reality are in many ways inseparable or…

"In-etched" reminiscences of the Annunciation strain against the dominant sexuality of MilT, simultaneously suggesting and denying the metonymic and synecdochaic relations between divine and earthly love. Nolan cites analogous examples of…

Absolon's profession is reflected in his elaborate hairstyle (rather than tonsure); in his red, white, and blue clothing; and in his choice of the cultour as a tool for revenge. With cutting blade in hand, Absolon takes his "patient" by surprise,…

Examines the "unconscious content" of RvT through a number of Chaucer's own "identifications": with Sir Edmund de la Pole, owner of the mill at Trumpington and brother of Sir Roger de la Pole; with Symkyn and the exorbitance of his social…

Dialectical and textual evidence suggests that the simile in RvT 1.3964 means "'she is as worthy as ditch-water is stinking' that is to say 'very worthy,' with no pejorative implication."

Reads MLT as a "thought experiment" in which the topos of the ship (familiar in both romance and political/legal philosophy) is used to confront the "conflict of laws" among the various cultures represented: Christian, Islamic, and pagan. With ClT,…

Frankis compares how Chaucer's MLT and Gower's "Tale of Constance" diminish Trevet's historiographical concern with Anglo-Saxon England. From the time of Bede, Aelle was associated with the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons, a motif retained by…

Explores the narrator's "royalist" politics in MLT, arguing that they are "more incomplete" than the narrator thinks. Alla is presented as a good king, and the Sultan follows the trajectory of a typical "martyr king," although the teller…

Through various alignments of Muslim and Christian characters and transgressions of social and gender boundaries, Chaucer "defamiliarizes" essentialist categories of race, class, gender, and especially religion in MLT. In particular, Chaucer depicts…