Browse Items (16471 total)

Examines the philosophical content of Chaucer's dream visions--the interplay between the soul and its courtly context--arguing that in Chaucer's world, the ideal of courtesy rather than any explicitly spiritual principle holds together a fictive…

Strohm calls for renewed sensitivity to historical particularity in the study of literature, especially Chaucer. Such study must acknowledge the limits of modernist empiricist assumptions and maintain deep respect for the past and its mutually…

Discusses the role of the narrator in BD, HF, PF, and TC.

This account of German-speaking Chaucer philology in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries challenges recent accusations that philology is responsible for the backward state of medieval studies. Different phases of Chaucer study are consistent…

Questions the notion that Nature was universally considered a positive force in the Middle Ages. Although depicted as God's vicar, Nature was also aligned with sexual impulses, complicating the image. White traces depictions of and attitudes toward…

Postcolonial analysis of post-Conquest attitudes toward France and French in England, considering the formulation of English identity. Williams discusses Chaucer, Corpus Christi plays, Stephen Hawes, John Skelton, Shakespeare, and continuing effects…

Nineteen essays on a variety of subjects, medieval to postmodern, literary and linguistic. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for And Gladly Wolde He Lerne and Gladly Teche (Goller) under Alternative Title.

Twenty-six essays on topics from Marie de France's "Guigemar" to Edward Burne-Jones's "Miracle of the Merciful Knight," with recurrent emphasis on the intersection between visual and verbal traditions. Includes a bibliography of Kolve's publications…

Identifies a number of points of comparison between Juan Ruiz's "El Libro" and CT: wide range of genres, ecclesiastical satire, comparable characters (e.g., the Prioress and Doña Garoa; the Wife of Bath and Trotaconventos), narrators'…

Classical and medieval Latin influences on the fabliaux are as important to analyze as are the analogues Chaucer draws upon for his tales. Specifically, a close consideration of Plautus and Latin elegiac comedy can lead to a fuller understanding of…

A collection of animal stories set in a frame-tale of animals on pilgrimage to Assisi. Twelve children's stories from international folk traditions. Text by Borlenghi; illustrations by Greenfield. Commemorates 600th anniversary of Chaucer's death.

In CT, Chaucer uses prologues to achieve great diversity, displacing himself with other narrators. He develops a counter movement in his epilogues, in which the conventions of religious epilogues communicate, however tenuously, a unified religious…

Details of the Prioress's GP description, WBPT, and Emelye's desires in KnT indicate that "women by nature oppose man's endeavor to rule and establish order in the world."

Chaucer and Langland are both "great religious writers," although Langland is more deeply engaged in "who and what God is." Both writers are poets of religious experience: Chaucer explores pathos, and Langland confronts the "central beliefs of…

Dinshaw considers her autobiographical "queer diasporic experience" as a "pale Indian" in light of the representations of conversion, otherness, and paleness in MLT and the generally unnoticed presence of Indian influences on early English studies.…

The late-medieval sense of individualism (identified by New Historicists) produced anxiety among writers, including Chaucer, Lydgate, and Hoccleve. Through various genres, these writers show a need to redefine sovereignty.

Fisher comments on the series of faces or portraits depicted in the historiated initials of the Bedford Psalter, arguing that they depict members of the affinities of Richard II and Henry IV: the kings themselves and the future Henry V, Gower,…

Gertz assesses 1337-1580 as the period of transition between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern era. Dynastic ambition, science, exploration, and disasters provide contexts and stimuli for the literature. In their rhetorical dexterity and highly…

Ten essays on Piers Plowman, including three that pertain to Chaucer. For essays pertaining to Chaucer, search for William Langland's Piers Plowman: A Book of Essays under Alternative Title.

Whereas Robert Henryson rarely uses animals for imagery or metaphoric comparisons (outside the allegory of "Morall Fabillis"), Chaucer "exploits the rich and variegated symbolic dimension" of references to animals, even while he avoids "explicit…

An introduction and eight essays explore various senses of time in the medieval world, assessing their influence upon life and culture. Topics include anachronism as a feature in earlier senses of time, perceptions of death and the Last Judgment,…

Tripartite study that first sketches the process of state formation in late-medieval England as a struggle between clerkly and chivalric cultures. Part II locates Chaucer's poetry within this process, assessing his reaction to chivalric culture in…

Seventeen essays on various issues in Old and Middle English linguistic study: language contact, borrowing, code-switching, spelling, versification, etc. For four essays pertain to Chaucer, search for Language Contact in the History of English under…

Dante and Chaucer elaborate on the three aspects of the classical goddess who appears as "Proserpina in hell, Diana on earth, and Luna" in heaven. Medieval commentary associates her with memory. Chaucer treats her recurrently, sometimes parodically,…

Knight calls for a critical confrontation with the semiotics of place in Chaucer, commenting on a number of topographical references in Chaucer's works, suggesting closer examination of implications of places to which Chaucer traveled (especially…