Browse Items (16376 total)

Although women and Jews were "equivalent others" in medieval orthodoxy, the doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity enabled the Church to sever the "historical ties between Christianity and Judaism" and to "exalt itself as a fixed and timeless…

Assesses Criseyde in TC and other widowed protagonists in medieval romances (Roman de Thèbes, Chértien's Yvain), exploring how "necessity of possession and ideals of chastity" are the prevailing stereotypes of the literary tradition. Unlike…

Rust describes medieval epistolary protocol and assesses three features of TC in Bodleian Library Manuscript Arch. Selden. B.24: an appended colophon, a female figure dressed in black drawn inside the first letter of the poem, and the scribal…

Seen in light of external texts that establish the medieval rhetoric of feminine virtue, Criseyde's betrayal reflects betrayal of the patriarchal culture that sets up expectations for feminine conduct and that uses a woman such as Criseyde for its…

To alleviate disappointment at Criseyde's lack of agency, readers should appreciate her not as a "real" woman but as an embodiment of the medieval masculine imagination. Criseyde follows the pattern of many of Chaucer's female characters: caught in a…

Modern psychological analysis of the codependent personality reveals the enigmatic nature of much of Criseyde's behavior. Her drive to please and the absence of healthy boundaries in relationships with others indicate that she lacks a clear sense of…

Jost applies performance theory to key points in the narrative at which Criseyde seems to manipulate her words and her behavior self-consciously to achieve a desired effect.

Knapp examines how Chaucer makes Criseyde beautiful to his audience (then and now) and how critical readings of her character rely on cultural constructs of aesthetic beauty.

Challenges R. E. Kaske's argument that Criseyde's aube is appropriate for a male speaker and suggests that her words indicate anxious weariness, perhaps even a death wish.

Against the backdrop of two of his own studies exploring the classical roots of TC, Fleming argues that Chaucer subverts gender stereotypes and the force of literary tradition as much as he can by giving Criseyde a measure of agency and by depicting…

Hodges analyzes Criseyde's costume rhetoric, comparing details of her dress (and how it changes throughout the work) with mourning customs of late fourteenth-century England.

Chaucer resists the prevailing "lusty widow" stereotype in his depictions of the Wife of Bath and Criseyde, paving the way for more positive images of widows on the Renaissance stage.

In Book 2 of TC, Criseyde gains subjectivity as a "reader" of Antigone's song. Although the narrator encourages female readers to "read like men" by identifying with Troilus, Margaret More Roper, in a letter to her father Sir Thomas More, aligns…

Revisiting his own "Chaucer and the Poets: An Essay on Troilus and Criseyde," Wetherbee argues that Criseyde is in many ways a more complex, mature, and heroic character than is Troilus. Troilus, the narrator of TC, and especially the narrator of…

A decade-by-decade evaluative overview of critical perspectives on Criseyde throughout the twentieth century.

The magical pageant of the Briton clerk (FranT) is imitated in Shakespeare's masque of Ceres ("The Tempest"); Humbert Humbert ("Lolita") is an analogue of Prospero. The image of the magician in each work points to the activity of the creative artist…

Discusses poet-narrator ambiguity in four TC prologues and the Epilogue and in the narrator's guise as historian. The narrator is detached and didactic but also compassionate and helpless.

The restaurant scene in "The Sun Also Rises" echoes the conclusion of Chaucer's PardT. Like the Pardoner, Jake Barnes is "sexually disabled" and spiritually remiss. Both characters see money as power; both substitute food and drink for sex; both…

"Sefer Yetsira" of the ancient Jewish mystics, Chaucer's PF and Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" center on the necessary acknowledgement of the unfixed quality of language that Bakhtin describes. All three are concerned with distinct moments in the…

Chaucer satirizes the anti-Semitism and sexual restrictiveness of the medieval church by presenting the serpent-Satan as a representation of Judaic reproduction denied the celibate Prioress. Rudat suggests the Prioress terminated an earlier unwanted…

Comparison with the ending of TC shows that Chaucer's Ret is not a literary device but rather an absolute statement of repentance.

A "palimpsestic" reading of MerT reveals the irony with which the Merchant treats January and with which Chaucer treats the Merchant, enriching and complicating the "Tale's" identification between the Merchant and January.

Identifies exegetical details in the characterization of Absolon in MilT, helping to identify the clerk with the sins of avarice, lechery, and pride and showing how he is a parody of Robyn the Miller "in the Miller's own tale."

Recommends showing students how digressive, "extra-narrative passages" in NPT "are the essence of Chaucer's intention, not obstructions." Includes discussion of contrasts between NPT and the Cock and Fox fable of Marie de France, focusing on…

Identifies three aspects of NPT that differ from those found in its analogues ("Roman du Renart" and "Reinhart Fuch"), arguing that Chaunticleer' s belief in dreams, the frugal poverty of the widow, and the limited role of the fox produce a "shifting…