Browse Items (16376 total)

In KnT, Chaucer manipulates devices of genre and rhetoric to achieve a highly sophisticated subtext of opacity and of perversion of order.

Replies to M. C. Seymour's identification of seven satiric loci in SqT arguing that Chaucer's manipulations of convention may be seen as innovation rather than parody.

Argues that both TC (particularly the Epilogue) and LGW evince Chaucer's "good-natured humor" which is "never vicious" but rather "shows a warm and compassionate understanding of the foibles of human beings, regardless of their sex." LGW is a "mock…

Examines human beings, nature, and poetic tropes in certain classical writers, in Dante, and in Chaucer's PF and TC.

Accounts of love from chronicles and letters show that historical love in the Middle Ages was as rich, varied, and earthy as even Chaucer could imagine.

Summarizes the operations and observations attendant upon restoring, photographing, and rebinding Ellesmere during preparation of the new facsimile.

The anonymous "Summa," dating from the middle of the thirteenth century, is the ultimate source of the "remedia" sections of Chaucer's ParsT. This critical edition, based on one of the nine surviving manuscripts, is accompanied by a translation…

Assesses CT as a web of Tales and voices, focusing on KnT, MilT as a response to KnT, the Marriage Group, and Chaucer's Italian sources, especially Boccaccio. Includes sections on the adaptations of KnT in Shakespeare, in Fletcher's "Two Noble…

Surveys British literary responses to "some aspects of the Muslim spiritual system," identifying instances in which British literature was influenced by Sufi mysticism or reflects awareness of it. Includes summary (pp. 37-39) of parallels between…

Without a shift in tone, Chaucer both appreciates and censures the fruitless love depicted in the Temple of Venus in PF. By fusing "joy and judgment," he evokes paradoxically the "deeper joy" of beauty.

Explores "mortal embodiment" in KnT, particularly in the descriptions of Arcite's lovesickness, injuries, and death, contrasting their physicality with the metaphysical perspective of Theseus's final speech. Designed for pedagogical use, includes…

Imagines the singing clergeon of PrT as a sort of zombie whose zombie faith is echoed by the Prioress.

The words "sodeny(ly)" and "proces" are keys to Chaucer's narrative skill. In both his serious and his comical narratives there are sudden changes in events, sudden shifts in emotions. He usually makes the sudden seem humorous, ridiculous, or…

A history of laughter in Western literature, focusing on the relation between laughter and literature, and surveying ancient, medieval, and modern traditions. In his Introduction, Sanders credits Chaucer with associating the roles of the feminine…

Affiliates the success, succession, and monumentalization of Chaucer in fifteenth-century literature with Lancastrian ascendancy and status, quoting and analyzing excerpts from Hoccleve, Lydgate, and Caxton.

To find his own poetic voice, Chaucer's dreamer in HF impersonates the non-canonical subjectivities and voices of women and animals in the form of Dido, the eagle, and the monster-woman Fame. By doing so, he turns away from masculine literary…

In his fiction, Chance contends, Tolkien subverts traditional class distinctions, and his studies of Chaucer reflect a similar sensibility.

The simile applied to the Friar--"His nekke 'whit' was 'as the flour-de-lys'"--functions externally and internally. The outward sign of his neck is symbolic of his inner degraded state of mind, which shows physiognomically a mark of licentiousness…

The Renaissance elicited mixed responses to machinery. Wolfe discusses reactions to Italian thought by Gabriel Harvey (including the effect on his reading of Chaucer), George Chapman, and Edmund Spenser.

The use of magic was exploitative and morally ambiguous; however, with the thirteenth-century rise of universities, attitudes shifted: through natural magic and great learning, one could harness natural powers. The "highly intellectual" FranT…

Shows how "Middle English writers tested the capabilities of their vernacular, experimenting with new genres and styles of literary composition, as well as with discursive conventions and practices borrowed from nonliterary fields," particularly the…

Studies caves in medieval literature as "agential bodies" that challenge "us to reconsider the stories of the women, monsters and marginalized beings who are made to inhabit subterranean spaces" Includes discussion of Emelye's address to Diana as…

Readers frequently imagine the Pardoner to be a real person. He is, of course, Chaucer's fiction, and the poet shows his mastery of narrative by combining the "Prologue" and the "Tale," underscoring the unity of the two by iterative imagery,…

Describes features of medieval economic practice that underlie the SqT and the Franklin's interruption of it, investigating fundamental interrelations among food, land, and social status and their resistance to occlusion. Designed for pedagogical…

Contains three essays on Chaucerian topics. For individual essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Subjects on the World's Stage under Alternative Title.