Eyler considers the Pauline concept of "spiritual athleticism" (a means of struggling with temptation) in hagiographic literature and in canonical medieval English texts, including CT. Argues that the spiritual athlete moves from "trope in early…
Cawsey examines the impact of assumptions about audience in the criticism of six twentieth-century Chaucer scholars (Kittredge, Lewis, Donaldson, Robertson, Dinshaw, and Patterson). These assumptions include whether the audience is diachronic or…
Lenz considers the collision/juxtaposition of dreams and medical knowledge in BD, HF, PF, TC and NPT. Argues that this confluence offers a previously neglected dimension of Chaucer's work.
Bobac examines the "social life of medieval justice as discursively constituted," considering WBT as an example of a text that explores the "theory and purpose of the punishments for rape."
Templeton, Willis Lee, II.
DAI A67.07 (2007): n.p.
Compares the "displays of masculine grief" in BD, the "Alliterative Morte Arthure," and "Sir Orfeo" with "norms of chivalric masculinity," investigating them in light of theories of Judith Butler and Jacques Derrida.
McCormick uses game theory and the debate genre to investigate the structure of LGW and of Pizan's "Le livre de la cité des dames." The former is "a ludic puzzle"; the latter, "an architectural mnemonic."
Kamath, Stephanie Anne Viereck Gibbs.
DAI A67.08 (2007): n.p.
Kamath traces "the impact of the innovative form of the Roman de la Rose in French and English history," considering the use of "vernacular first-person allegory" by writers such as Deguileville, Chaucer, Lydgate, and Hoccleve.
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.
