Browse Items (16472 total)

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…

Examines the cardinal virtues, especially prudence, from the Socratic philosophers to the late Middle Ages. Considers Mel in an epilogue.

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 …

Uses Chaucer (selections from CT) and Langland to contextualize "patient heroism" in medieval romances, especially "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight."

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…

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.