Browse Items (16471 total)

Seventeen essays by various authors on topics that pertain to women, writing, and social conditions in England and the Continent in the late Middle Ages. None of the essay pertains to Chaucer exclusively, but references to his works recur throughout,…

Discussions of the "quarrel" between Chaucer and Gower (anchored in MLP) pose a Chaucer who was free of base, ingratiating attitudes toward his sovereign and who was the source of pure poeticality--language and aesthetics unpolluted by self-interest.…

The persistent and untrue story of a "quarrel" between Gower and Chaucer can be explained by the notion of rape. Gower's use of the Philomela legend in Confessio Amantis and Chaucer's use of it in TC suggest that in their "interaction with one…

In chapters on Adam, TC, LGW, MLT, WBT, ClT, and PardT, Dinshaw argues that Chaucer's writing constructs and engages a sexual poetics. She contends that "whoever exerts control of signification, of language and the literary act, is associated with…

The unresolved contradicitons, sudden shifts, and visible seams in MLT indicate the Man of Law's limitations not just as storyteller but also "as a man of law." The limits of the common law of his patriarchial society give him his identity and…

Dinshaw argues that we must read the text of Chaucer dialectically, "both (as) the expression of an individual, historical writer and as having significance that is dependent upon preexisting structures of language." Investigates how texts "create"…

Most of the objects and language associated with the Pardoner mirror his fragmentation of incompleteness. Significantly, the literary background in the "Roman de la Rose" follows the account of the castration of Saturn and Raison's defense of plain…

The widely separate and influential readings of TC by E. Talbot Donaldson and D. W. Robertson, Jr., while based on diametrically opposed theoretical principles, nevertheless find themselves in areement by virtue of their attempt to effect some manner…

Abridged version of a portion of Dinshaw's Chaucer's Sexual Politics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), pp. 28-64.

Both PardT and the Pardoner's interruption of the Wife in WBT are "touches of the queer" that temporarily denaturalize heterosexual subjectivity, revealing its performative nature.

Explores how the Pardoner and his interruption of WBP challenge the heteronormativity of CT. The opening lines of GP and WBT establish a heterosexual norm that the presence of the Pardoner challenges by making clear the constructed and contestable…

Dinshaw considers her autobiographical "queer diasporic experience" as a "pale Indian" in light of the representations of conversion, otherness, and paleness in MLT and the generally unnoticed presence of Indian influences on early English studies.…

Plenary address to the Illinois Medieval Association; adapted from Dinshaw's Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern (SAC 23 [2001], no. 184). Discusses late-medieval court records concerning cross-dressing and…

Dinshaw contemplates recent critical trends in medieval studies in light of the events of September 11, 2001, tracing the developments of feminist, queer, and postcolonial approaches to Chaucer's works by focusing on MLT.

Reports on how notions of heterosexual normativity can be used in classroom discussions of BD, TC, and CT.

Contemplates the queer potential of parody and other forms of "engaging multiple temporalities," commenting on two nineteenth-century responses to the "Book of John Mandeville" and on a fictional incident posted on Brantley Bryant's "Chaucer Hath a…

Addresses queer readings and the asynchrony of time within medieval tales in relation to "amateur medievalists" and scholars. Study includes discussion of temporality, queer historicism, and autobiographical anecdotes, providing a fresh way of…

Provides an afterword to the special issue on LGW, focusing on the theme of love's loss, and presents an argument that Prince's song "When You Were Mine" provides a foil for the women of LGW.

Assesses the need for experimentation in current educational endeavors, considered in light of the provocative "failure" of the "Strawberry Creek College" (officially, the "Collegiate Seminar Program") of University of California, Berkeley, and the…

Deals with both real ecstatic visions and fictional literary visions and gives criteria to discern them. Thus it provides the background for Chaucer's dream poetry as well, quoting Langland, BD, HF, LGW, PF, etc.

Surveys the medical knowledge evident in CT, commenting on Chaucer's breadth of learning. Includes a glossary of medical terms found in CT.

Arthurian romance in Chaucer's WBT becomes analogous to "old wives' tales" denounced by Scripture, Augustine and other patristic writers, and ParsT. The Wife's telling such a romance undermines her claim to be a notable preacher and associates her…

Seventy-five lesson plans for teaching writing to high school students, arranged in seven categories: Writing Process, Portfolios, Literature, Research, Grammar, Writing on Demand, and Media. Two of the plans for writing about literature focus on…

The question whether a poet celebrates the famous (medieval view) or seeks personal fame (Renaissance) is examined through classical and medieval traditions and in HF.

Sixteen fifteenth-century CT Tales" manuscripts-- anthologized on the basis of theme, subject, or interest--survive. They reveal middle-class taste through their moral and devotional content and indicate the popularity and availability of…