Browse Items (16376 total)

Contends that although "Pearl" and PrPT treat the Eucharist as orthodox, they nonetheless evoke religious debates concerning Lollardy and, relatedly, continental female mysticism. Argues that both the works feminize sacramental work, preach in ways…

Argues that theological modes of inquiry are needed in interdisciplinary approaches to literature that have tended toward secular and "reductive" methodologies. Notes the difficulty of teaching theological modes of inquiry through Chaucer when few…

Contrasts the ending of PrT with Latin analogues to argue that the Tale is less concerned with miracles than with martyrdom--Jewish martyrdom as well as Christian--whereby Chaucer suggests the need for mourning human death.

Webb briefly cites two CT characters: the Prioress is an unusual, but not impossible, instance of a nun on a local (as opposed to a foreign) pilgrimage; the Wife of Bath parallels several historical women who capitalized on their peripatetic…

Discusses problems of translating medieval texts, especially CT and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," treating problems of cultural distance and reception as well as linguistic aspects.

Collette reads the end of CT against Philippe de Mézières' "Songe du vieil pelerin," indicating Chaucer's connections with contemporary Anglo-French literature and exploring the relations between politics and morality in four Tales: alchemy as a…

Examines features of CT that make it difficult to fit the work into the modern "frame" of teleological development, medieval to modern. Focuses on "postmodern" features of the work, its tensions between allegory and realism, and its game-like…

MLT engages with ideas found in Latin and French treatises advocating crusade and assesses the rhetoric and practices of crusades, critiquing their mercantile aims, the ignorance of cultural differences dooming efforts to convert Muslims, and poor…

Pity's "double life" as person and quality "calls attention to the mechanics" of allegory and to one's "ordinary" experience of pity; through word play, pity is both dead to the frustrated lover and alive to others.

Swooning in medieval literature points to a marked cultural contrast between medieval sensibilities and modern ones for which swooning is extreme and exceptional. This broad survey defines swooning as a "loss of consciousness, brought on by…

Chaucer, Lydgate, and Henryson recognized a song's ability to excite and articulate passionate feeling and they invoke the idea of song in their works in ways that call attention "to the formal qualities of song itself." Zeeman inquires into "the…

In their attention to language as "an active part of social life," the FranT, NPT, and ManT constitute a language group whose tales are deeply rhetorical in the sense that they look closely at how language works as "an entity, process or phenomenon,"…

Examines twenty-five CT mss in which "Gamelyn" appears and makes suggestions about the tale's relationship to the CT, arguing against the notion that early scribes included it on "wholly whimsical grounds." Its inclusion early in the textual…

Considers various conditions of and approaches to pronouncing--or not pronouncing--final "-e" in Chaucer's verse, arguing that "Chaucer's final "-es" are a subjective quality of his verse, a series of phonological events structured not by metrical or…

A portion of a copy of Caxton's first edition of CT was "harvested" to make a run of "leaf books" for the Caxton Club. Mosser describes the project, the known portions of the dismembered book, the known copies of Caxton's first edition, collectors'…

Historical background: assesses the "social and military role of the squire" in England and northern France.

Historical background of the chess game in knightly culture with a reference to BD.

Comments on the theme of marriage in Chaucer's works to indicate the poet's "capacious view of love and sexuality." Chaucer's representations of marriage range from bawdy humor in WBP to the sublime in BD, often combining more than one view, as in…

Investigates queer consolation in ClT, exploring interconnections among consent, Griselda's masochistic suffering, Walter's sadistic testing and desire to know, their "power exchange" (a concept drawn from BDSM), the gameful earnestness of "happiness…

Assesses "iterations of sadomasochistic historophilia"--a term coined term here--in Chaucer's "use of Trojan and Theban history" in TC, examining the "role of Statius's "Thebaid," the place of Criseyde's collar-like Theban brooch, and the narrator's…

Describes visits by American students to London and Canterbury Cathedral as part of a study-abroad program.

Announces a forthcoming board game, "The Road to Canterbury" (Gryphon Games), created by Alf Seegert. The game focuses on the Pardoner, who is traveling with "seven of Chaucer's pilgrims, each of whom is afflicted with one of the seven deadly sins."

Identifies difficulties in translating Chaucer for American audiences: linguistic difficulties (especially false cognates such as "countrefete" and "lust") and several social changes that make Chaucer the "absent father in the United States."

One of the stumbling blocks to an unbiased reading of Chaucer is the prevalence of "humanistic" criticism, which is "intra-literary" and a kind of "anti-literature." The necessary corrective is "'meta'-humanistic" criticism, which strives "not to…

PhyT combines several conflicting ideas of virginity: its role in confronting the "ritualized violence of sacrifice," its emphasis on "bodily wholeness," and its "figuration of innocence and purity." In comparison with its sources, PhyT emphasizes…