Browse Items (16472 total)

Responding to Greenblatt's essay, Bellamy explores the status of psychoanalytic criticism in medieval studies, with particular focus on Chaucer studies.

Discusses the relationship between the Prioress's "empty" rhetoric, audience reception, and emphatically feminine representation. The Prioress, in this reading, is a kind of false prophet, more dangerous than the Pardoner who plays a similar role.

Enters the discussion about apparent temporal discrepancies in PF and reframes it with a reminder that the poem occurs in a dream vision, and need not correspond literally to English weather and bird behavior. Embraces contradictory references to…

Notes that counterfeit and forged documents appear frequently in CT, but most frequently in exemplary and ethical tales such as MLT and ClT. This suggests Chaucer's lack of trust in this kind of writing and his preference for an ethics based on…

Examines "afterlives" of Chaucer created by post-medieval scholars using digital tools. Argues for attention to digital engagements with Chaucer, such as "Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog," as having significant existences separate from a historical…

Explores the use of the phrase "good fellow" as it is used in Martin Scorsese's film, "Goodfellas," Clanvowe's Lollard treatise, "The Two Ways," and FrT.

Examines the significance of William Morris' direct engagement with Chaucer's works. The illustrations and intricate frames of his Kelmscott Chaucer are complex and communicative, serving as creatively productive interruptions to the act of reading.

Looks at Chaucer's use of "two sententiae" to explore the interplay between Chaucer's use of silences and pauses in PrT, and the reader's engagement with the story.

Argues for an "ethical" reading of Chaucer's view of poetry in CT distinct from didacticism, examining Chaucer's engagement with sententiae of Plato and St. Paul and suggesting that, for Chaucer, poetry's value is in the process of interpretation it…

Considers the relationship between the Wife of Bath and the Clerk, focusing on their shared approach to self-presentation through the words of other writers and their interrelationship as speakers. Highlights the Wife's use of clerical authority and…

Examines Chaucer's use of sun-king imagery and references to Apollo in a variety of works. Compiles historical connections among Chaucer's allusions and Richard II and other political figures' iconography, suggesting a multivalent portrayal of…

Questions the idea that Chaucer's relationship with the alliterative verse of his contemporaries, such as the "Gawain"-poet and Langland, was antagonistic. Instead, suggests that the alliterative and the London poets participate in a shared metrical…

In Chaucer's England, the legal term "homicide" ("deliberate infliction of death," justified or not) was distinct from "murder," which carried negative moral connotations but had no legal definition. In CT, Chaucer uses the terms precisely and…

Argues that the characterizations in Willa Cather's "Death Comes for the Archbishop" were influenced by Chaucer's GP descriptions, particularly those of his ecclesiastical characters. The two authors also share a tendency to avoid rigid schemata of…

Assesses the poetic structure of Edwin Arlington Robinson's "The Man Against the Sky," demonstrating that it "juxtaposes two dissimilar ideas forcing a new understanding of relationship" in an inorganic fashion similar to that found in Ovid, Chaucer,…

In the drawing of the Canterbury Pilgrims, Blake's antithetical method, employing ironic juxtaposition and counterpoint, invites the viewer to participate in the exercise of the Divine Vision of forgiveness by distinguishing "States from Individuals…

Adapts aspects of CT (particularly WBPT, PardPT, and MilT), "Everyman," and "Piers Plowman" in a single plot, designed for the stage, with a brief Introduction and stage directions.

An anthology of selections from medieval literatures that influenced J. R. R. Tolkien: Old English, Middle English, Old Norse, Celtic (Welsh and Irish), and Finnish. Includes RvT, NPT, and FranT (pp. 127-53), translated by John S. P. Tatlock and…

Yvernault explores various levels of the love discourse in PF in relation to the roles played by reflection and silence.

Surveys recent criticism of ClT, focusing on Griselda as allegory, as "a figure of divinity," and as a flat figure. Concludes that Griselda may simply be read as a real person.

Kendrick considers a portion of PardP (lines 352-88) in light of two thirteenth-century charlatans' spiels invented for performance by jongleurs: Rutebeuf's "Dit de l'herberie" and Peire Cardenal's "Dit de l'onguent."

Piety and pathos heighten the impact of PrT and promote the narrator's reputation for religious correctness, yet all aspects of her Tale are undermined by pointlessness. Greenwood argues that the Tale is dialogistic and Menippean; a satirical subtext…

Explores the combination of "manly" and "man," as well as the meaning of "manly," in reference to the GP description of the Monk.

Contradictions inherent in medieval social order are evident in the sources of Mel, but Chaucer reconciles these contradictions through his treatment of pity.

Analyzes Chaucer's characterization of the birds in PF to explore the process of "distanciation," stemming from two coexisting viewpoints in the poem: the author's and the dreamer's.