Examines the vice of curiosity, arguing that Chaucer both expands its application from the realm of the intellectual to the realm of the physical, and suggests that poetry may be a cause and a remedy for the desire to inquire into private matters.…
Discusses the eremitical image of Chaucer promulgated by Shirley and Lydgate in the context of efforts to promote solitary, contemplative modes of life.
Looks at confessional elements in works by Chaucer, Langland, Gower, Usk, and Hoccleve, ultimately arguing that such practice is central to an understanding of early English vernacular literature.
Contends that metaphors of hunting in TC and the alliterative "Morte Arthure" are intended for a noble audience, and in turn, they shape that audience's attention to ideas of love and chivalry.
Arguing that translations may be used to shape and define community identities, considers MLT as an effort to establish a "multicultural English Christianity." Other examined texts include "Orosius" and Aelfric's "Lives of the Saints."
Argues that female bodies in CT represent texts that are unreadable by husbands, and suggests that ultimately, this is symptomatic of an impossibility of "cognitive seeking."
Comber, Abigail Elizabeth.
DAI A74.05 (2013): n.p.
Suggests that texts like PrT might be taught by examining their presentation of non-followers of Christianity as monsters, an alternative to post-colonial approaches.
Compares LGW and Christine de Pizan's "Book of the City of Ladies" to Boccaccio's "Famous Women," arguing that Pizan's work is on equal footing with the other two texts.
Linking the idea of intention to the moral self in the medieval understanding of the subject, considers TC along with Margery Kempe and "The Testimony of William Thorpe."
Offers ShT as an example of how the use of fabliaux aids an understanding and exploration of marital dynamics, suggesting that the tale presents the merchant's marriage as a sort of economic contract between equals.
In context of a larger study of dream visions, uses HF as an example of the ironic dream vision, arguing that it treats authority ironically, whereas other dream visions (e.g., Macrobius on Scipio, Julian of Norwich's mystical visions) offer other…
Contemplates the personification of Imagination (as in the cases of personified Nature and Reason) from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, with attention to the particulars inherent in the process of characterization. Focuses on "uncertainty of…
Looks at writers, including Hoccleve and Lydgate, as responding to and shaping a post-Chaucerian literary era, examining both the "end" of Chaucer's era and the "end" or purpose of their own work.
Examines the titular writings as early examples of English prison writing, with an eye toward political implications of the texts and the establishment of a relationship between social status and "carceral experience" in these works. Includes…
Compares elements of privacy (e.g., "access, intimacy, and withdrawal") in official documents and records to canonical literary works including TC, "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," and Malory.
As part of a larger discussion of "loathliness" and the transformation away from loathliness in the context of marginalization of women, examines WBPT. Particular attention is paid to "the implications of disembodying a Loathly Lady in a tale that…
Considers vernacular change and development in Chaucer's work through the lens of a suggested parallel to fourteenth-century Italian poetry that "inspired scribes and translators to develop sophisticated methods of using form to reflect historical,…
Suggests that Chaucer's LGW is part of a "counter-tradition" (also including Shakespeare, Milton, and Lucy Hutchinson) that develops against the epic's "images of sexual violence against marginalized females," and that this counter-tradition provides…
