Browse Items (16346 total)

This distillation of modern scholarship traces not only the causes and conduct of the Hundred Years' War but also its effects and reflections, including literature, in both societies, England and France.

Explores "how late medieval English poets used the properties of trees, from their branching forms to their growth cycles, to negotiate literary influence and construct poetic meaning." Includes a chapter on HF as well as one each on "Piers…

Explores the conventionality/unconventionality of plot, detail, and image in "The Floure and the Leafe," arguing that its depiction of "literary nature" presents "poetry as a shared and participatory tradition: a carefully maintained garden from…

Describes Chaucer's use of Arabic and Hebrew diction in Astr as "horizontal multilingualism," i.e., "not colonialist or Orientalist."

Explores the metaphoric and symbolic value of walls and gaps in the Thisbe account in LGW.

Examines the allegorical purposes of LGWP, assessing the dream structure and the importance of the dreamer's awakening at the end of the G version.

Assesses similarities and differences between the two Prologues to LGW and the portrayal of Cupid in the Dido account, examining the power relations between Cupid and Alceste and, beyond this microstructure, the masculine-feminine relations of the…

Argues that in the LGW account of Lucrece (a tale of enforced copulation), Chaucer uses the word "myght" as a noun, a verb, and a copula to suggest the ultimate triumph of the heroine's seductive rhetoric. The story is less about rape than about…

Preface by André Crépin. In his representation of gender in its relation to power in LGW, Chaucer departs from the conservative social and literary norms of his age while appearing to adhere to those norms. Chaucer undercuts his overt…

Chaucer's changes to the Ovidian version of Hypermnestra in LGW--exchanging the names of Danaus and Aegyptus and then reducing the number of daughters from fifty to one--were not an "error." Chaucer both indicates that men are not "stably positioned…

Three concerns in LGW--space in "Thisbe," rhetoric in "Lucrece," and the exchange of women in "Hypsipyle and Medea"--demonstrate that the power of apparently passive women lies in their moral superiority over men.

The relation between public and private in MilT may be understood as the condition of "extimacy": "the presence of the Other at the place thought to be most intimate." The "structure of extimacy" frustrates masculine attempts to control or acquire…

Explores how Chaucer's reflections on maternity expose a relationship between Christianity and other religions in MLT.

Chaucer rewrites his source in Ovid "Metamaphorses" 6 to show the strong bond between the sisters who provide solace to each other. The same kind of bond is shown among the women who support the raped maiden in the WBT. The meaning of rape in…

Examines the idea of the horizon in relation to dream activity and Chaucer's dream poetry.

Compares Chaucer's PrT with Alfonso X's "Cantigas de Santa Maria" (no. 6),analyzing them in detail (from plot to prosody), and providing parallel editions of the two texts. In Spanish.

Argues that the balanced opposition between the sacred and the secular in the opening and closing sections of the GP encourages readers to be tolerant and cautious in judgment.

Dutch verse translation of CT, with introduction and notes.

The section of FranT in which January makes his decision to marry exemplifies Chaucer's use of materials from the 'Miroir de Mariage'.

Argues that gestures and postures of the three main characters in MerT contribute to the realism and harshness of the tale.

Translates into modern unrhymed pentameter the LGWP-F version and LGW, based on the Riverside edition, with a brief introduction and notes. Also translates works by Guillaume de Machaut ("Jugement dou roy de Behaigne" and "Jugement dou roy de…

Describes how the PardPT together work to convey the message that the Pardoner does more good than he intends.

The fluctuation of the narrative point of view in GP results in a paradox: whereas the compositional devices inhibit verisimilitude, received critical opinion recognizes the pilgrims as highly realistic representatives of fourteenth-century life. …

Twenty-eight essays by various authors on linguistic aspects of Old and Middle English. For three that pertain to Chaucer; search for Historical Englishes in Varieties of Texts and Contexts under Alternative Title.

Ambrisco describes teaching SqT as an "unsolved problem in Chaucerian reception"--SqT is a work favored by the Franklin and early readers such as Spenser and Milton, but decried or ignored by formalist critics. Opening class discussion to the…