Browse Items (16376 total)

Argues that the enigmatic "thing" thrice referred to in PF is a "structuring device" but also a "reflection on the process of translation, specifically Chaucer's translation of Boethius's 'Consolation of Philosophy'." PF depicts "translation as an…

Considers PF and other works in a discussion of how "the roots of formal print censorship in England are to be found in earlier forms of intolerance."

Contends that Chaucer is "expecting, indeed exploiting, the gap between the reception of a poem when it is heard socially and its afterlife as a text," when it is a different thing. Argues "that a poem's form is itself a way of communicating ideas."

Surveys historical and literary evidence that deer were kept as pets in the Middle Ages, including discussion of deer parks and Nature's garden in PF, which "Chaucer's audience would almost certainly have understood as a deer park."

Argues that PF offers an "innovative model of species uncertainty" that aligns with posthumanist rejection of human specialness. The poem evokes and challenges the dualism of Scipio's dream, offering alternatives in the animism of the tree catalogue…

Using concepts derived from Roland Barthes, argues that PF is both a "text of pleasure with its reflection of courtly culture" and a "text of bliss with its unconcluded conclusion."

Considers four frame-tale versions of the Philomela story--Margaret Atwood's "Nightingale" in "The Tent" (2006), George Pettie's in "A Petite Pallace of Pettie His Pleasure" (1576), Chaucer's in LGW, and Gower's in "Confessio Amantis"--focusing on…

Discusses how LGW represents marital affection as contentious and unstable.

Argues that Chaucer employs Livy's and Augustine's stories of Lucretia as a way to hold up feminine virtue, rather than repeating their negative attributes exhibited in the source material.

Argues that in the Dido account of LGW Chaucer "channels" deep-seated cultural "anxiety about Phoenicians as he asserts his place in a Roman-centered Western tradition." By "removing the story of Dido's diasporic leadership, and misidentifying her…

Investigates several motifs in the LGW account of Philomela: victimhood, "inappropriate sovereignty," muteness, orality and legal witnessing, "tapestry-as-prosthesis," rape as a property crime, and lack of legal remedy, arguing that Chaucer's tale…

Explores why LGW unsettles readers and outlines this special issue of "Chaucer Review."

Investigates how Chaucer, Gower, Langland, Usk, and Hoccleve use confessional discourse to challenge Latinity and "authorize their own literary productions." Includes discussion of the "self-abasing literary self-portrayals as penitents" found in…

Describes the medieval understanding of "faculty psychology"--the three cells or ventricles where imagination, logic, and memory reside--and argues that HF "takes the audience" through the three ventricles, while exploring the creative potential of…

Examines the ways in which the Legend of Ariadne in LGW reflects Chaucer's concerns over the cyclical and repeating tragedies of history.

Explores the role of the narrator in LGW as being culpable in his deception by telling idealized stories of women who suffer and die.

Provides an afterword to the special issue on LGW, focusing on the theme of love's loss, and presents an argument that Prince's song "When You Were Mine" provides a foil for the women of LGW.

Claims that LGW may have been viewed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as a response to TC and as an allegory for how Chaucer may have interacted with patrons.

Investigates Chaucer's multiple registers of speech in order to explore social harmony and discord in LGW as it pertains to women's desires.

Connects LGW with the "Livre du Chevalier de la Tour Landry" and the "Menagier de Paris." Suggests that the domestic sphere of "Livre du Chevalier de la Tour Landry" and the "Menagier de Paris" offers a place for productive, satisfying love; however,…

Surveys "the idea literary fame" in classical and medieval traditions (Homer, Hesiod, Virgil, Statius, and Dante); analyzes Petrarch's notion more extensively; and examines HF to show that though Chaucer, "like Petrarch, was intimately familiar with…

Studies physical motion, readerly motion, and other motions related to texts in late medieval English literature, including a chapter on Chaucer's "engagement with motion as a concept in natural philosophy" in HF and PF, connecting it with the…

Studies the uses of allegory in western literature--classical, continental, and English, from Prudentius to George Herbert--with emphasis on growth and variety in the tradition, signals to allegory in the texts, and embedded uses of allegory as well…

Explores the significance of Chaucer's travels through Kent. Claims that HF resonates with the cult and Church of St. Leonard in Kent.

Includes a chapter entitled "Chaucer, House of Fame" (pp. 355-83) that describes HF and characterizes Chaucer's treatment of literary reputation as unusual in lacking the "moralistic slant" of his predecessors, opting instead for a "disillusioned…