Browse Items (16380 total)

A study of later medieval commentaries on classical myth in the Boethian work sheds light on such matters as Chaucer's treatment of the Muses and Lydgate's view of Hercules.

Neither WBT nor "Gawain" presents straightforward satire on late-fourteenth-century English romance. At once ironic and idealistic, the two works provide a human redefinition of the genre as exemplified in contemporary chivalric writing.

With CT, Chaucer raises many feminist cultural issues, exploring gender stereotyping and the limits it imposes on individuals. The men of KnT contrast with those of MilT and MerT, and all diverge from the overtly Christian ParsT. Exemplary female…

Although personification is currently devalued, analysis of its poetic codes of invention reveals its complexity in the works of Prudentius, Langland, Spenser and Chaucer (HF and PF).

Humor may be classified as visual, antirepressive, and linguistic-stylistic (sophisticated and often ironic). Gloss treats seven authors of four nationalities, including Chaucer.

Chaucer's prosody has been underrated. With its unity, completeness, and carefully developed stanzas, TC demonstrates Chaucer's mastery of sound and sense.

Penitential theology, as derived from St. Augustine and subsequent writers, holds humanity to be sinful yet possessed of reason and hence of responsibility. ParsT and Ruiz's Prologue examine this tradition with examples to reveal human nature; thus,…

Although the medieval Venus and Cupid are usually interpreted interchangeably on the basis of "courtly love" or the Robertsonian concept of "caritas" and "cupiditas," analysis of texts (including HF, PF, KnT, TC, and LGW) indicates otherwise. Venus…

The deserted woman, deriving from classical sources through medieval tradition, embodied the conflict of "amor" and "pietas." Appearing in allusion, exempla, and the poems HF, LGW, MLT, FranT, Anel, and TC, the deserted woman demonstrates for…

Although classical, Renaissance, and modern satire may represent recognizable genres, a definition of medieval satire must be sought through consideration of how classical satirists were studied in medieval schools and how three poets wrote.

Though read as tragedy, comedy or satire, TC can be understood as "compilatio" or Bakhtinian "polyglossa." With Boccaccio's plot of tragic love, Chaucer incorporates a subtext of Boethian philosophy (as treated by Jean de Meun) and allusions to…

TC yields diametrically opposed readings to a feminist and a semiotician. Through alteration and modulation of critical assumptions, a new model for medieval literature may be set forth.

Twelfth-century lyric employs a generalized, nonhistoric "I"; thirteenth-century composition represses this voice in favor of a specific and individualized narrator. BD, though it seems to endorse the latter, actually returns to the songlike,…

CT is treated, along with the "Decameron," in part 2, chapter 4, following background analysis of "One Thousand and One Nights" in Arabic tradition and preceding consideration of Cervantes and Borges.

Consistent with Bakhtinian theory, the palinode as textual stratagem has complicated the interpretation of works from the classics through Stampa and Sidney. The Griselda story as told by Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Chaucer demonstrates the role of…

Wyclif believed in the absolute authority of Scripture, with the mission of the Church as simple transmission without modification. In SumT, CYT, NPT, and ParsT, Chaucer questions the possibility of rehearsing truth inasmuch as the speakers distort…

Unlike Dante, who recognizes his poetic "fathers" in the Divine Comedy and sees himself as surpassing them, Chaucer in TC adopts the stance of the translator of an ancient text but questions the value of its tradition.

Applies Freudian and feminist theory to three extracanonical medieval texts, presenting them as the "unconscious" of works in the literary canon. Also analyzes BD and TC.

Chaucer employs traditional garden topoi (locus amoenus, hortus conclusus, and paradys d'amours) to draw attention to precursors, to create discrepancy between CT context and tradition, to individualize narrators, and to show literary indebtedness in…

Mentions Chaucer among poets (Guillem IX, Marcabru, Dante, and especially Langland) who helped develop the distinction between history and fiction and who showed themselves to be individuals, not for self-promotion but to identify themselves…

By manipulating his presumed sources and through the voices of the narrator and his characters, Chaucer develops reader-response strategy with such rhetorical devices as repetition and wordplay. The reflexive TC shows both love and language as…

With the inevitable variations produced by different scribes, CT has been edited by copyists who interpret the work variously (e.g., as ordered or unordered). A critical edition of the spurious links is here presented.

Following Foucault, Root examines the theory that patristic tradition and ecclesiastical practice eventually permitted confessional self-representation, as seen especially in WBT, Livre du voir dit, and Libro di buen Amor.

Studies rhymes and rhyme words (the elements least liable to errors in transcription) and amends the traditional view that Chaucer could have written Fragment A but neither B nor C: fragments A and C are equidistant from B and could be the work of a…

This first in-depth description of MS. Harley 7333 provides textual information, lists editions, and describes relationships to other medieval texts. The contents shed light on scribal editing in CT.