Browse Items (16381 total)

Investigates the logic of "sovereignty" in PhyT, and how sovereignty is transferred from God, to nature, then to Virginia, and back to the people who "subvert the
entire political order" toward the end of the tale. Sovereignty is directly associated…

Discusses the idea of the marvelous in the "Gawain"-poet's Arthurian romance and in FranT. Argues that the marvels in FranT are indispensable to the genre, producing the effect described by J. R. R. Tolkien as "eucatastrophe."

Studies shifting perspectives on love, marriage, and honor in FranT and WBT.

Focuses on how playfulness breaks the limits of existential constraint in FranT.

literary heritage of Breton lay narratives, with emphasis on FranT. For three essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for A noble tale / Among us shall awake under Alternative Title

Explores the notion of commitment in connection with the contradictory and untenable verbal pledges in FranT.

Focuses on literary food writing and includes brief discussion of the Franklin's hospitality in GP..

Argues that the Franklin presents a formula for happiness: living a life of "gentilesse" as opposed to the principle of adhering to a law-based system of morality.

Examines the management of time in the "Aeson episode" of Ovid's "Metamorphoses" (Book VII), the Tale of Menedon in Boccaccio's "Filocolo,"and FranT, focusing on Medea's "carmen," Tebano's magic, Dorigen's complaint, and their parallels with poetic…

Considers why the tale of the Mongol Empire is allocated to the young Squire. Points out the Squire's idealistic representation of the royal family of the Empire and discusses Chaucer's possible attitude toward SqT, taking fourteenth-century…

Argues that SqT is an exception among medieval romances because it investigates things that are not what they seem. The first section of the tale scrutinizes the mechanics of marvels and wonder; the second explores the mechanics of stories,…

Treats control as a thematic device in MerT and in CT at large. January seeks to control May through literal enclosure, but is himself figuratively controlled by May and Damian, becoming a keeper kept. Conversely, the pilgrim narrator of CT…

Suggests Arabic texts not as sources for MerT, but as fellow exemplars of certain similar "universal" archetypes (tree, garden, billet-doux, key). Juxtaposes Arabic tales (some from "The Arabian Nights") with MerT, and organizes stories by tree type…

Evaluates Chaucer's strategies of adapting his Italian sources in ClT. He uses three paratexts to adjust the original story to the specific narratological and structural microcosm of CT: ClP, the conclusion explaining what Petrarch meant in…

In rendering Petrarch's explanation for why God tests humans in the form of a disjointed sentence (ClT, 1153-61), Chaucer points out its irrationality. Argues how this ploy resonates with the Clerk's expression of qualms about Petrarch at the…

Points out lines of ClT not included in either of the Latin and French sources and considers the meanings of these additions by Chaucer. Argues that Walter is characterized as stricter in ClT, and discusses the narrator Clerk's position in relation…

Examines the irony and paradoxes of ClT, claiming that through the Tale, the Clerk "challenges an audience as Griselda's impassive patience challenges Walter." Views the Clerk as a "complicated figure of utter submissiveness and essential silence…

Examines the Summoner in GP in connection with representations of leprosy and discusses the limitations of the digital manuscripts used to research findings.

Analyzes the Wife of Bath's "deceptive nature of fine outward show," in terms of her dress and clothing, as opposed to her inner purity in WBT.

Compares WBT with its Middle English analogues and comments on the relations between WBPT and ShT. http://repository.seikei.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/10928/86/1/bungaku-46_13-22.pdf (accessed January 12, 2016). In Japanese.

Argues that the Wife's "fyr" and "tow" not only warn against sexual temptation but are also a contemporary "reference to the fatal accident at the "bal des ardents" at the French royal court in 1393, which very nearly took the life of Charles VI."

Identifies relations between domestic and pedagogical violence in WBP, establishing that its vocabulary is "redolent of the classroom" and arguing that Jankyn's treatment of Alison grants her agency, albeit unintentionally. Describes the motivations…

Establishes how WBT's treatment of sovereignty and of civic and domestic institutions "redefine[s] English nobility as a national form of identity" that crosses class and gender boundaries. Further argues that Chaucer's anachronistic use of Dante in…

Argues that WBP 3.21 should be emended from "fifthe" to "sixte."

Examines connections between women's weaving and preaching by focusing on Alisoun. Uses the metaphor of weaving to establish how Alisoun "wove textiles and words as a mode of female expression and critique of the patriarchal church's interpretation…