Browse Items (16376 total)

Employing the Lacanian theory of Slavoj Žižek, Sullivan examines the relationship of HF to Augustine's "Confessions," Virgil's "Aeneid," Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy," and Dante's "Divine Comedy," arguing that Chaucer and Dante rewrite…

Jager contends that medieval English poetry occupied a "hybrid" oral/written cultural space and that the poems "posit an artisanal, poetic masculinity." She uses Th, along with "Piers Plowman," "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," and other works,…

Cole contends that metrical groupings of works from the "Alliterative Revival" are faulty and that these groupings reflect inappropriate application of phonology common in the "poetic dialects" of Chaucer and Gower.

Uses KnT and TC (among other works) as case texts for a study of recognition within various forms of medieval romance. In particular, Manion argues that these Chaucerian texts use recognition as a means of speculating on the limits of interpersonal…

Applies the thought of Bernard of Clairvaux to issues of human action and subjection to God and law, as seen in ClT, MLT, KnT, FrT, and PhyT. Argues that a fuller understanding of Chaucer's "religious background" is essential to interpretation of his…

Places Chaucer in a tradition of English visionary literature that culminates in the second generation of Romantic poets.

Focuses on "Piers Plowman" (and considers TC), using "modern lyric criticism" as an approach to medieval narratives.

Tormey examines metal and metalworking as symbols of economic forces shaping the development of epic form and subject matter. Discusses CT and Dante's "Inferno" as "proto-commercial travel narratives."

Contrasts WBT to popular romance narratives of the period, arguing that notions of "sentence"--i.e., of "meaning that is inscribed into a narrative by its author"--force high cultural glossing onto popular texts that may not be best suited to such…

Considers Chaucer's works in the context of medieval poetry, approached here as "instantiations of performance," i.e., understood as interplay among author, performer, audience, and the material form of the texts.

Sisk contends that a number of late medieval works, including Fragment 8 of CT, "obliquely" address contemporary religious issues. These works mark a departure from more traditional (and clearly didactic) religious treatises and may even suggest that…

Looks at ClT and Boccaccio's "Decameron" 10.10, along with works of St. Jerome, Apuleius, and Petrarch, to examine assumptions about Griselda and versions of her tale, arguing that Chaucer was aware of the Boccaccio text.

While considering how speech in narrative poetry may represent "a distinct category within linguistic discourse," Coley reads ManT as a Chaucerian interaction with William of Ockham's rejection of longstanding Augustinian "hierarchies."

Considers Chaucer's use of Arthurian legend, from his use in TC of the traditional French conception of Lancelot for Troilus to his examination of the subtext the legend provides for the fabric of fourteenth-century English society. In particular,…

Traces Chaucer's interest in three concerns that are related to the development of English as a vernacular language: "the nature of translation, the construction of textual memory, and the relationship between reading and ethics." Assesses literal…

Considers dream visions in the works of Chaucer and his successors (Hoccleve, Lydgate, Skelton, and Spenser), arguing that these dreams break down "binary" notions, including those of body/mind, gender, and text/reader.

Reads the Wife of Bath as "Chaucer's construction of the . . . female body as a literal and metaphoric text," and explores how depictions of the Wife in modern films respond to her critical reception as well as his original creation.

Yu examines the changing roles of literary rhetoric and dialectic, poesy and logic, from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. Chaucer is cited as a writer whose use of irony reflects changes in the understanding of logic.

Examining how post-Chaucerian writers and critics even to the present day have added and responded to CT, Higl argues that their works are analogous to the pilgrims' fictive contest. The dissertation assesses the evidence of reception in select CT…

Uses HF--along with Langland's "Piers Plowman," "St. Erkenwald," and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"--as evidence in a discussion of the medieval understanding of the memorialization process, suggesting that fame "becomes emblematic" of the…

Davis examines ramifications of the interplay between graphic design and text in William Morris's Kelmscott edition of Chaucer, arguing that the consequent mediation is a precursor to Walter Benjamin's theorized divorce of mechanically reproduced art…

Considers the alternation between the pedagogy of argument (prose sections) and pleasure (metrical sections) in "prosimetrum," arguing that the form of Boethius's "Consolation" was as essential as its content for writers such as Chaucer, Usk,…

Various Middle English authors succeeded in making London an urban, laicized intellectual center that balanced the clerical legacies of Cambridge and Oxford. These authors explored various academic disciplines (e.g., alchemy for Chaucer) in a manner…

As part of a discussion of Gower's trilingualism and his uses of history, science, and literature, Zarins contrasts the treatment of astronomy and literature in HF with Gower's "praise of science . . . for its own sake."

Argues that racial differentiation--generally associated with the early modern period--was not necessarily secondary to religious distinctions in the late medieval period, using MLT and other texts as evidence.