Browse Items (16379 total)

Addresses the male gaze "at other men's bodies," focusing on visual art and on "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Includes comments on Chaucer's "lingering over the details of Nicholas's ass" in MilT.

Ten essays by various authors, with an introduction by the editors and an index. For four essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Fleshly Things and Spiritual Matters under Alternative Title.

Examines the process of medieval poetic invention expressed in the poetry of Chaucer and John Gower. Draws on contemporary affect theory to present ways that both poets present "invention as an affective force" in representations of emotional…

Explores how the "sacred and the secular interact" in Latin, French, and English texts and frames this "crossover concept" as key to understanding medieval literature. Includes discussion of PrT, FranT, KnT, MLT, WBPT, LGW, and TC.

Introduces Chaucer's life and works, emphasizing the "scope and diversity" of his poetry. Describes each of his major works, and anatomizes CT as "one of the earliest collections of short stories of almost every conceivable type," describing the…

Considers the philosophical ramifications of understanding music, particularly as evidenced in BD, HF, PF, and ManT.

Studies how recollection is achieved through physical, cognitive, and interpretive challenges. Uses examples from Chaucer's romances to explore individual and collective memory processes, discussing memory in KnT, BD, and TC.

Studies the medieval and early modern theory of tropological, or moral, sense of Scripture. Argues that tropology can be "theory of literary and ethical invention" as a way to interpret the Bible. Includes brief discussions of Langland's and…

Uses KnT, among other works, in a study of medieval works combining prose and lyric poetry (common in France, but less studied in English.)

Focuses on ways Chaucer's successors employed lists in dream visions, and refers to HF, BD, PF, LGW, KnT, and GP. Argues that by employing different listing techniques, medieval authors used lists as a way of legitimizing themselves as authors.

Asserts that details of astrology, astronomy, and mythology in BD, TC, and CT evince Chaucer's confused and skeptical views of Christianity, commenting on passages from LGW and CT. Available at http://nobleworld.biz/images/Mohammed_Raji.pdf (last…

Addresses historical and social complexities of anti-Semitism and Jewish--Christian dynamics in medieval English texts. Chapter 3, "The Minster and the Privy: Jews, Lending, and the Making of Christian Space in Chaucer's England," focuses on…

In the course of a discussion of a medieval aesthetic associating romance's luxury with aristocracy, finds examples in HF and TC, among other period works.

Defends the "depth of thought and the diversity of expression that characterized the Middle Ages" through an examination of "philosophical treatises, memoirs, letters, tales, romances, and epics that drove the medieval search for wisdom." The chapter…

Focuses on the "preoccupation with newness and novelty in literary, scientific, and religious discourses of the twelfth through sixteenth centuries." Examines the "newfangledness" of the "romance discourse" in SqT and alchemy in CYT.

Introduces the major forms of English poetry from lyric to dramatic monologue to sonnet to ballad and beyond, with recurrent references to Chaucer's role in their development (see index), and a sustained discussion of Chaucer and narrative poetry…

Analyzes Chaucer's use of seascapes and water imagery in LGW, HF, and TC, attending to their metaphoric qualities and their narrative functions.

Examines how the "lost culture" of oral literary and folk and popular traditions of the Middle Ages influenced medieval writers. Mentions Chaucer's understanding of proverbs and oral and folk culture in ClT, WBT, MLT, FranT, and TC.

Addresses the "handling of gendered shame" in Chaucer's works, arguing that shamefastness (modesty) is a "point of tension between medieval concepts of manliness and feminine honour." Paradoxically, shame is a feature of female honor, while ideals of…

Explores enigmatic medieval attitudes toward poverty through the allegorical figures of three "loathly ladies"--Lady Poverty (Franciscan "Sacrum commercium"), Chaucer's Wife of Bath's hag, and Glad Poverty (Prologue to Book III of Lydgate's "Fall of…

Examines two major medieval turning-points in the relationship between rich and poor: the revolution in charity of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the era of late medieval crises when the vulnerability of the poor increased and charitable…

Explores memory and gender in TC, focusing on the poem's deployment of the trope of the knot, as representative of both memory and the bond of love. Argues that the poem's use of knots and nets does not easily resolve itself into gender binaries or…

Examines the "author/reader dynamic" in Dante's "Commedia" and HF.

Discusses the influence of Boethius and Boccaccio on Chaucer's depiction of the Monk in CT.

Draws on connections between "Chaucerian poetics and the properties . . . of gold," and maintains that "gold is a deep metaphor for poetry." Examines Chaucer's poetic references to gold and "sumptuous description" in CT, particularly in KnT.