Uses MLT, among other works, to show that in Middle English romance, with its limited expression of characters' inner lives, identity is expressed and revealed through "external signs," outward behavior, and immutable "key characteristics."
Cook, Alexandra Kollontai.
DAI A67.10 (2007): n.p.
Like many of his predecessors, Chaucer explores risks in dealing with pagan sources, but he renders such risks pleasurable as a means to "destabilize Christian constructs of safety."
Surveys representations of sexual violence as both gender oppression and means to self-awareness between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries in England, discussing WBPT and Mel, among other texts.
Bowen considers the treatment of stringed instruments in Chaucer's Latin sources, their treatment as symbols of "celebration and peace" for characters in CT, and connections between the instruments and concepts of bodies. Stringed instruments…
Chaucer and Gower distance themselves from French influence in the 1380s and 1390s as a way to criticize Richard's "predilection for French literature" and to train their readers to read and interpret.
Fragment 1 of CT (KnT, MilT, and RvT) "posit[s] contra-factual histories" for Chaucer's source texts while employing imagery of "sodomy, rape and monstrous hybrids" as refutations of those histories' threats to the structure of a salvation comedy.
Discusses CT, especially WBP, in a study of the construction of the "self" in the late medieval and early modern periods. Focuses on how a complex sense of the self is constructed in "The Book of Margery Kempe" and developed into the seventeenth…
In a larger investigation of the philosophical concept of sympathy, Lopez discusses the lack of sympathy, both personal and spatiotemporal, between May and January in MerT.
Discusses prayer in various contexts. Chaucer depicts prayer as a means to explore "thorny issues of theology" and often places his prayers in "pagan contexts."
Hsy explores the use of English, French, and Latin by writers such as Chaucer, Gower, and Margery Kempe in conjunction with the polyglot mercantile culture of London. Argues that these writers "hybridize" multilingual traditions to form "hybrid …
Employs the metaphor of the vegetable to examine a variety of poetic works, emphasizing "metamorphic natural processes, and thus the dissolution of boundaries between states of being." Considers CT as an example, focusing on complicated, entertwined…
Stockton discusses the "critique of cynical reason" in CT as part of a larger psychoanalytical discussion of the role of comedy in the formation of the foundations of civilizations.
Discussing the use of relics as a site of "institutional control," Malo argues that in works such as CT, writers "use relics as tools" for affirmation or critique of the Church's position as dispenser of grace and healing.
Employs Jacques Le Goff's ideas of "Church time" and "merchant's time" to consider reckoning of time and social rank in the York cycle, "Pearl," and works of Chaucer. In particular, Astr suggests knowledge of time, while MilT and ShT demonstrate…
Explores how the concern with vision as a way of knowing is a concern in a variety of medieval dream visions, including "Pearl," "Piers Plowman," and HF.
Considers TC, MLT, and LGW in the larger context of the idea of "raptus" (rape or abduction) and its implications for national and other borders and for female status.
Using the medieval concepts of "intromissive optics" and the passive viewer, Martin suggests that Chaucer in TC, KnT, and MerT employs conventions from outside the romance genre at the moment of sight. She contrasts this technique with that of…
Examines the motif of renunciation in CT, ranging from renunciation of poetry (MkT, ParsT, and Ret) to renunciation of music and high-flown rhetoric (ManT), renunciation of curiosity (MilT, CYT), and praiseworthy acts of renunciation (ClT, FranT).…
Applies notions of links between tale and teller to apocryphal tales, an approach suggested by the medieval notion of "auctoritee." Concludes that post-medieval editions of CT do not "accurately" reflect the medieval understanding of the work as "a…
Chaucer and other writers of the "middle strata" of English society (Gower and Langland) "imagine economic activity" in ways that are much like the views recorded in documentary writing. Such writings by societal, administrative, and governmental…
Looks at flattery "as a practice" (for communicating with superiors) and "as a discourse" (the conventional railings against the practice) in a variety of Middle English texts. Chapter 3 examines Mel, MerT, and NPT as "conjunctions of flattery and …
Brandolino examines reciprocity between faith and interiority in a number of late medieval English vernacular texts, including WBPT and SNT. After 1215, when Pope Innocent III "issued a decree requiring all Christians . . . to make an annual private…
