The essays in ChauR 41.3 explore Donaldson's accomplishments in "his guises as editor, philologist, and New Critic" and the continued relevance of that work in the early twenty-first century.
Exemplified by those of Carolyn Dinshaw and Elaine Tuttle Hansen, feminist critiques of E. Talbot Donaldson's scholarship are curiously similar to D. W. Robertson's critiques of that scholarship. These critiques find fault in its subjectivity and…
In opposition to Robertson's "patristic exegesis," Donaldson models a practice of engaging the autonomy of medieval texts. In the process, he adopts a critical persona that, feminist critiques notwithstanding, "is a decorous fiction which may or may…
Despite their diverse emphases, critical responses to the Monk's portrait in GP evince the same "close reading instinct" that generated E. Talbot Donaldson's "Chaucer the Pilgrim" essay and that has persisted "in an almost universal unwillingness . .…
Given its resonance with references to duties of friendship that preface many astrolabe treatises, Chaucer's reference to his young son Lewis as his "frend" may accede to the wishes of adult friends who also wished for "a companionable guide to…
Objective evaluation reveals the "elusive" and contradictory "evidence" on which chronologies of Chaucer's works--and, most notably, constructions of his artistic maturation--are based. These constructions are essentially interpretive activities;…
Studying CT alongside early and late versions of the Wycliffite Bible reveals examples of Chaucer's nearly direct quotations from LV and of his sympathy with developments in translation theory from EV to LV, which favored more idiomatic renderings of…
Lydgate's poetic trial of Brunhilde indicates a conviction that poets have a central role in shaping and transmitting "fama." In sharp contrast, Chaucer depicts fama as a function of "aventure" in HF.
Numerous fourteenth-century documents that address the practice of extortion by institutional "middlemen" point to systemic problems rather than to individual turpitude. FrT reflects this contemporary explanation, albeit without exonerating the…
Whereas the GP portrait of the Prioress raises questions about the operation of performances in general, we see in PrPT the efficacy of performative utterances in particular. Details of the boy's murder and postmortem singing demonstrate that the…
Looking beyond the OED's definition of "span"--a length of roughly nine inches--to a range of medieval senses of the word suggests that the width of the Prioress's forehead "offers no meaningful foothold for objecting to her."
Each of the legends makes use of "the metonymic possibilities of objects and bodies" to represent the difficulty of discerning truth from fable in written sources available to the historiographer.
A series of essays and translations written between 1877 and 1886, Mary Eliza Haweis's work on MilT constitutes a large and uniquely positive chapter in the reception of MilT in Victorian England.
Bromyard's denunciation of "popular views on sex" in the Luxuria section of his "Summa Predicantium" resonates verbally and structurally with WBP, suggesting that the Wife's performance functions in part as a counterattack to such sermonizing by …
Beyond her concern to remain bodily faithful to her husband, Dorigen also exhibits a commitment to keep faith with her word. But the Tale's denouement suggests that Dorigen's ultimate interest lies less with honoring her promises than with having a…
Chaucer's audience would have considered the Miller's apparent lack of jealousy toward his wife in the context of a long-standing teaching that jealousy has a salutary side. According to that view, "[w]hoever is not jealous does not love."
Read as symptoms of a "childlike" individual "dealing with a number of psychosexual developmental issues," the Prioress's personal habits and narrative performance register anxiety not only about boundaries of the individual human body but also about…
Heretofore noted for its allusions to TC, the romance "Amoryus and Cleopes" also develops many of the themes, motifs, and stylistic traits of Fragment 5 of CT (SqT and FranT), in particular "its portrayal of pagan religion, its treatment of…
A recognition of the Pardoner as a "parodic relic custodian" calls for a fresh look at his sexuality--relic custodians were to be celibate--and casts into relief the tension in CT between restrictive ecclesiastical power and "lay desire" for access…
A petition in the hand of Pinkhurst requesting that a permanent deputy be appointed to relieve Chaucer of his duties as controller of the wool custom establishes their connection in 1385. However, codicological evidence suggests that the poet "was no…
Fein, Susanna, and David Raybin.
ChauR 46.1-2 (2011): 1-9.
Introduces the essays in a double-issue of "Chaucer Review" dedicated to C. David Benson; includes a black-and-white picture of Benson and a bibliography of his publications.
Argues that SNT "presents conversion as a choice stimulated by apprehension of the divine through the senses" and accomplished by a "radical act of the will, unmediated and immediate, if not inherently violent."
Assesses the relations between universality and particularity as epistemological modes in MLT, exploring allegory and individuality, realism and nominalism, and generalization and specification in the characterization of Custance and how she is…
