Dennis, Erin N.
Bruce E. Brandt and Michael S. Nagy, eds. Proceedings of the 14th Northern Plains Conference on Earlier British Literature, April 7-8, 2006 (Brookings, S.Dak.: English Department, South Dakota State University, 2006), pp. 107-23.
Dennis explores how WBP and WBT affirm and challenge the patriarchal assumptions of medieval literary and social traditions.
Examines the titular writings as early examples of English prison writing, with an eye toward political implications of the texts and the establishment of a relationship between social status and "carceral experience" in these works. Includes…
Denny-Brown, Andrea.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 28 (2006): 77-115.
Denny-Brown assesses the vacillations between sartorial richesse and rudenesse in ClT, examining the gender and class implications of Griselda's dressing, undressing, and redressing and counterpointing Walter's attitudes toward clothing and material…
Denny-Brown analyzes sartorial changes accompanying the figure of Fortune from the twelfth century through the late medieval period, considering (along with works by other authors) Chaucer's For, Bo, Form Age, Wom Unc, BD, and MerT. Chaucer's uses of…
Denny-Brown, Andrea.
Lisa H. Cooper and Andrea Denny-Brown,eds. Lydgate Matters: Poetry and Material Culture in the Fifteenth Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 35-56.
Denny-Brown explores roots of the medieval legends of Bicorn and Chichevache, examining how Chaucer develops the "themes of beastly appetites" in ClT and how Lydgate expands the theme of appetite in his "Bycorne and Chychevache."
Dent, A. A.
Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society 9 (1959): 1-12.
Investigates the "equestrian vocabulary" used by Chaucer, with particular attention to GP, but including his other references to horses, their tackle, colors, names, conditions, movements, etc., clarifying the denotations of the terminology. Includes…
Compares and contrasts details of the illustrative portraits of the Canterbury pilgrims--illuminations from the Ellesmere manuscript and woodcuts from Richard Pynson's edition of 1491/92, here inaccurately called the "first printed edition." Comments…
Comments on Chaucer's status as a member of the middle class, and explores his depiction of middle-class society in CT, with attention to how it reflects his contemporary world. Includes four b&w illustrations.
Dent, Judith Anne.
Dissertation Abstracts International 48 (1988): 1774A.
Showing his perception of inadequacies in the practice of medicine through the Physician's portrait in GP and PhyT, Chaucer reveals his belief in the balance of mind, body, and soul and the need for God as physician in BD, GP, WBT, MilT,MerT, KnT,…
Depres, Denise L.
Sheila Delany, ed. Chaucer and the Jews: Sources, Contexts, Meanings (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 145-64.
Unlike the isolated narrative of Jews in CT (PrT), various narratives in the Vernon manuscript investigate the Jew in markedly different ways, going beyond demonization of Jews to debate their essential nature.
Dermond, Donna, and Paul Hogan.
Once and Future Classroom 1.2 (2003): n.p. [Web publication]
Describes an experiment in teaching CT (especially GP) that has students attempt to write their own Chaucerian satiric descriptions and tales, perhaps delivered orally at different campus locations.
Desmond, Marilyn.
In John F. Miller and Carole E. Newlands, eds. A Handbook to the Reception of Ovid (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014), pp. 161-73.
Surveys the impact on medieval poetry of Ovid as a love poet, including comments on Chaucer's use of "Ars amatoria" in WBP, where Ovid's "erotic poetics" are "domesticated" and the reception of his poem reaches its "zenith." Central to "Chaucerian…
Desmond, Marilyn.
Suzanne Conklin Akbari and James Simpson, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer (Oxford: Oxford Handbook of Chaucer), pp. 238-51.
Surveys some of the sources of and connections among the various texts that predate Chaucer and that describe Troy and its fall. Discusses a range of Chaucerian engagements with Troy, including BD and TC.
Desmond, Marilynn R.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 35 (2013): 179-207.
Explores the influence of Italian and French vernacular versions of Ovid's "Heroides" on the legends of LGW, where Chaucer engages and undermines the historical emphasis of these vernacular versions and reasserts the literary, rhetorical authority of…
Desmond, Marilynn Robin.
Dissertation Abstracts International 46 (1986): 2687A-2688A.
Studies medieval assumptions about and deformations of Virgil's "Aeneid." Chapter 3 presents the "self-conscious ironic" version of the Dido story in LGW; chapter 4, Chaucer's assumptions about the "Aeneid" in HF. Notes on Chretien, Caxton,…
The "Legend of Dido" explicitly evokes its pretexts: the narrator names Virgil and Ovid and summarizes, paraphrases, and purposefully distorts the texts.
Desmond, Marilynn.
Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1994.
Surveys understandings of Dido--e.g., historical, Virgilian, Ovidian--and examines what her medieval presentations tell us about intertextual relations, gender attitudes, and the "reading positions" of various medieval authors, including Chaucer,…
Desmond, Marilynn.
Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006.
Desmond studies the discourse of erotic violence in medieval literature and iconography, surveying depictions of the "mounted Aristotle" and focusing on the adaptations of material from Ovid's "Ars Amatoria" found in the letters of Héoïse and…
Uses two of the "modes of existence" theorized by Bruno Latour--technological and fictional--to examine medieval manuscripts, arguing that the "affordances and ecologies" of codices as technology encouraged the "proliferation" of fictional beings in…
DeSpain, Jessica.
Journal of the William Morris Society 15.4 (2004): 74-90
In his Kelmscott Chaucer, Morris presents Chaucer as a proponent of anti-capitalist socialism, consistent with Morris's own arts and crafts movement. The essay comments on the heteroglot voices of the Canterbury pilgrims and the Kelmscott…
Despres, Denise, L.
Modern Philology 91 (1994): 413-27.
England's implementation of the Fourth Lateran Council's legislation of 1215, two anti-Judaism sermon exempla from medieval manuscripts, and the "child-as-Host" motif suggest how the "ideology of bodily and social purity could become salient for the…
Derived from St. Bonaventure, the Franciscan model of meditation afforded the laity of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries a "means of participating in an eternal present," as demonstrated in "Piers Plowman," "Pearl," and "The Book of…
Despres, Denise.
Suzanne Conklin Akbari and James Simpson, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 527-44.
Discusses iconography and pilgrimage, and Chaucer's investments in and depiction of the "power of images" through tales of CT, including GP, PrT, and PardT. Argues that "Chaucer demonstrates that devotional images . . . are inherently polymorphous…
