Browse Items (16376 total)

Traces the "motif of visible speech" in HF, identifying its source in Dante's "Divine Comedy," and exploring its relations with questions of literary transmission, especially in depictions of the story of Dido, the eagle's speech, and the House of…

Refers to Roger Bacon's description of the use of encryption in Equat, noting that Chaucer's authorship is not definitive.

Questions whether BD circulated in the fourteenth century and whether it was commissioned by John of Gaunt as an elegy for his wife. The mid-fifteenth-century manuscript Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Fairfax 16 bears the arms of a court functionary,…

Theorizes three medieval literary tropes ("the bodily cut; stained glass; and, the grafted tree") as means to connect "exclusive entities" (dead and living, past and present, and earthly and celestial), as well as the medieval/postmodern divide.…

Highlights the "creative disruptions of Chaucerian parody" and argues that BD satirizes the language of courtly complaint to privilege more naturalistic expression of mourning. Through his conversation with the dreamer, the knight's language moves…

Drawing on affect theory and psychoanalytic methodologies, considers the relationship between the "awake body" and "emotional utterance" in BD, relating this to notions of "translatio." Highlights the centrality of the Ceyx and Alcyone episode to…

Argues for the "strong intertextual presence" of Machaut's "Remede de Fortune" in BD, reflective of developments in late medieval francophone and anglophone social history. Both poems combine praise for an idealized lady with an account of the…

Argues that the differing treatments of Morpheus in BD and Machaut's "Fonteinne amoureuse" "reflect on the advantages and limitations of 'imitatio' as a tool for authorial self-promotion." Underlying this reflection are contrasting strategies for…

Studies the rhetorical topos of exemplary lists of famous antique figures in BD, in comparison with contemporary uses of the device. Chaucer's lists are more than simply didactic or conventional, affirming "chivalric and regal identity" and thus…

Shows how the "relationship between voice and identity" is a preoccupation of both BD and one of its chief sources, Machaut's "Dit de la fonteinne amoureuse." Highlights the formative influence of the composite "Roman de la Rose"--particularly its…

Highlights the thematic centrality of memorialization, tombs, and inscription in the Ceyx and Alcyone story from Ovid to Chaucer to Spenser. The intertextual relations among these versions is predicated not on the principle of genealogical succession…

Examines the "metafictional import of sleep," as distinct from dreaming, in BD. Influenced by Machaut's "Livre de la fonteinne amoreuse," BD aligns sleep, as an embodied process, with the "werk" of elegy.

Considers how technologies of memory inform reflections on composition, literary relationships, and the elegiac project in BD, engendering a "focused commentary" on the "work of recollection." In this, BD participates in a discursive field shared by…

Outlines the numerous problems surrounding BD's dating, occasion, early transmission history, title, and text. Because of the small number and lateness of manuscript witnesses, BD evinces significant "textual uncertainty"; consequently, literary…

Considers the relations between BD and fourteenth-century devotional texts, particularly "Cursor mundi," that disparage "fable" as a form of idleness. Rejecting the popular association between consuming fiction and playing idle games, BD reclaims…

Includes nine essays, plus a response, by various authors, with an index and an introduction by the editor. Argues for a reassessment of the critical relevance of BD, which has often been marginalized, as a work that is simultaneously "multilingual"…

Argues that Chaucer anticipates readings of Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" as centrally devotional rather than philosophical. Chaucer's word choices in Bo bring this emphasis to the fore, especially of the concluding lines of the work.…

Explores the meaning of Chaucer's astrolabe and reflects upon medieval England and the English language.

Considers the astrolabe as an instrument and Chaucer's Astr as a translation, correlating their "transmedial" features, which provoke "alternate angles of view on instrumentality" and interrogate relations between human and nonhuman epistemologies.…

Argues that Anel "proffers lessons about memory and progress" that can help survivors of modern cancer victims to achieve "intergenerational" memory, an ethical and therapeutic notion that derives from Paul Davies's contested theory that cancer cells…

Argues that not just TC but also Anel has an important function in Henryson's "Testament." Echoes of this poem affect judgment of Cresseid and Troilus, and the question of what constitutes "truth," for lover, narrator, or reader. The notion of…

Identifies possible analogues to CYPT and constructs stemmata of narrative motifs to explore the relations between Chaucer's work and the others, showing that the ninth chapter of the "Kitah al-mukhtar fı kashf al-asrar" of thirteenth-century Syrian…

Demonstrates that in his remarks on distilling mercury, the Canon's Yeoman draws from Arnald Villanova's "De secretis" rather than from the "Rosarium," as the Yeoman claims (CYT 8.1028-29). Claims that Chaucer's misidentification plausibly springs…

Shows how NPT, FranT, and Ret reveal the rigor of Chaucer's philosophy, comparing matter-form distinctions underlying these works with the positions of a wide range of notable philosophers, from Plato and Aristotle to Jacques Lacan and François…

Explores the connection between animals and poetry, arguing for an emphasis on poetry that describes animals. Maintains that poetry's openness to experimentation with language mirrors its depiction of a blurred boundary between the human and the…