Evans, Robert C.
James M. Dean, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer (Ipswich, Mass., Salem Press), pp. 144-58.
Proposes viewing Donne's poem "The Flea" from the theoretical perspective of D. W. Robertson, and argues that "if we read Donne's poem as Robertson reads Chaucer, a different kind of Donne emerges" than previously shown by scholars.
Evans, Robert C.
James M. Dean, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer (Ipswich, Mass.: Salem Press, 2017), pp. 201-15.
Presents overlap between Chaucer's writings and the writings of Thomas Nashe, particularly the late sixteenth-century poem "The Choice of Valentines," which is "considered to be the most pornographic piece of writing to survive" Shakespeare's time.…
Evans, Robert O.
Notes and Queries 202 (1957): 234-37.
Analyzes the meter of the opening line of CT (GP 1.1), focusing on renderings of "Aprill(e)" in manuscripts and printed editions, comparing it with meter elsewhere in CT, and arguing "that there is a strong possibility, even a probability, that…
Evans, Ruth, and Lesley Johnson, eds.
London and New York: Routledge, 1994.
Ten essays by various hands, including an introduction by the editors, plus previously published pieces by Mary Carruthers (with a new Afterword), Sheila Delany, and Susan Schibanoff. Topics include Christine de Pizan, Margery Kempe, "Piers Plowman,"…
Evans, Ruth, ed.
Cardiff : University of Wales Press, 2006.
Seventeen essays by various authors on topics such as Robin Hood, Chaucer, medieval romance, medievalism, cultural studies, and modern crime fiction. Includes an introduction (pp. 1-6) and a bibliography of Knight's publications (pp. 269-77). For six…
Evans, Ruth.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 23: 43-69, 2001.
HF provokes reflection on the "historical processes of memorialization." Such concepts as the brass tablet, apostrophe to Thought, inscribed ice block, and House of Rumor are analogous to conceptualizations of personal and cultural memory (history)…
Evans, Ruth.
Elizabeth Herbert McAvoy and Teresa Walters, eds. Consuming Narratives: Gender and Monstrous Appetite in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2002), pp. 182-95.
Surveys originary myths in which human females have sex with supernatural beings, focusing on versions of the story of Albina and her sisters, who have sex with demons-incubi and give birth to the giants of Albion. Evans reads the Wife of Bath's…
Evans, Ruth.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 28 (2006): 263-70.
Considers the implications of source study and its revitalization in response to recent theory, raising questions about its (possibly irreconcilable) relationships with intertextuality, "genetic criticism," invention, translation, and electronic…
Evans, Ruth.
Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses 47 (2003): 87-99.
Comments on Pierre Nora's theory of cultural memory loss and on Christopher Nolan's film "Memento" (2000). Then explores TC for the ways that it represents the relations between historical events and the reconstruction or remembering of these…
Evans, Ruth.
Myra Seaman, Eileen A. Joy, and Nicola Masciandaro, eds. Dark Chaucer: An Assortment (Brooklyn, N. Y.: Punctum Books, 2012), pp. 29-41.
Concentrates on Ceyx and Alcyone's encounter in BD as a communication failure that aligns with a series of other failed attempts at communication throughout the poem.
Evans, Ruth.
Beatrice Fannon, ed. Medieval English Literature (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 128-43.
Explores memory and gender in TC, focusing on the poem's deployment of the trope of the knot, as representative of both memory and the bond of love. Argues that the poem's use of knots and nets does not easily resolve itself into gender binaries or…
Evans, Ruth.
Valerie Allen and Ruth Evans, eds. Roadworks: Medieval Britain, Medieval Roads (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), pp. 127-56.
Uses the methodologies of urban studies and space studies to investigate the "cultural and cognitive aspects of medieval wayfinding," and comments on CT and the illustrations of the Ellesmere manuscript as evidence of how medieval travelers used and…
Evans, Ruth.
Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Nicholas Watson, Andrew Taylor, and Ruth Evans, eds. The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory, 1280-1520 (University Park : Pennsylvania State University Press; Exeter: University of Exeter Press 1999), pp. 331-52, pp. 371-78.
Assesses the functions of prologues in Middle English literature, commenting on nuances of "prohemye," "prefacyon," "preamble," etc., and exploring how prefatory works "disorganiz[e] the categories of center and periphery, 'theoria' and 'praxis'."…
Evans, Ruth.
In The Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales. https://opencanterburytales.dsl.lsu.edu, 2017. Relocated 2025 at https://opencanterburytales.lsusites.org/
Describes distinctions that derive from transgender politics and explores how the gender and sexual identities in SumPT--"largely constructed by and through its twin genres of antifraternal critique and fabliau"--"insinuate that friars are both…
Evans, Ruth.
Helen M. Hickey, Anne McKendry, and Melissa Raine, eds. Contemporary Chaucer across the Centuries (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018), pp. 56-73.
Laments critical inattention to the prevalence of rhyme-breaking in Chaucer's poetry, and explores precedents in continental medieval verse and its critical traditions. Clarifies the term, and gauges the effects and functions of the device in a…
Evans, Ruth.
Frank Grady, ed. The Cambridge Companion to "The Canterbury Tales" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 238-43.
Discusses public-facing writing about Chaucer and his texts and argues that "this writing's engagement with contemporary politics speaks to our and our students' experiences, and is already changing the direction of both classroom practice and…
Describes the history of digitizing the journal SAC, commenting on the future of print journals and "the overall impact of digitization on scholarly societies."
Evans, Ruth.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 44 (2022): 3-26.
Contemplates the value of studying Chaucer in light of national and international calls to decenter the poet and his works, considering the history and politics of these calls, the nature of canon-making, and several instances where "Chaucer's work…
Evans, Ruth.
Yearbook of English Studies 53 (2024, for 2023): 85-100.
Explores ways that "Jacques Lacan's radical account of sexual difference" as "the articulation of an impasse of language" can open ways to see beyond "normative views of sexual difference and femininity" in reading WBPT.
Evans, Trena Marie.
Dissertation Abstracts International 62: 1008A, 2002.
Late-medieval lay meditation extended the subject matter (previously the life of Christ) and the boundaries considered suitable for vernacular material. Evans treats Chaucer's TC, John Metham, Thomas Hoccleve, Nicholas Love, and anonymous works.
Evans, William Dansby.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59 (1998): 1175A.
Examines Eliot's senior-year courses at Harvard for their medieval focus (in art, literature, and philosophy) in the light of primary materials (including Eliot's annotated Chaucer textbook).
Everest, Carol (A.)
Muriel Whitaker, ed. Sovereign Lady: Essays on Women in Middle English Literature (New York and London: Garland, 1995), pp. 63-84.
The traditional Galenic idea that conception requires female orgasm indicates that May is not pregnant by January. However, implicit and symbolic references to seed and fruit suggest that Damian has impregnated her.
Everest, Carol A.
Melitta Weiss Adamson, ed. Food in the Middle Ages: A Book of Essays (New York and London: Garland, 1995), pp. 161-75.
May's request for pears in MerT indicates that she is pregnant, since medieval texts align the condition with a desire for unripe fruit. Moreover, medieval medical treatises recommend pears for the treatment of stomach disroders, "especially the…
