Browse Items (16472 total)

Contrasts Chaucer's storytelling techniques in KnT, MilT, PardT, WBT, MLT, and MerT with those of their sources, contemporary writings, and folk traditions. Uses the approaches of Propp, Bal, Bakhtin, and Frye.

"Second Nun and Her Tale" as prepared for the "Variorum Chaucer," based on the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts, with explanatory notes and critical commentary to 1994.

In medieval literature, the sins of Cain and Nimrod acquired sexual overtones associated with wandering. Warner assesses in this light the "Alliterative Morte Arthure," Dante, Abelard, Langland and NPT.

Chaucer's uses of political discourse intersect with his concerns about poetic authority. In PF, "commune profyt" represents both an equivocal political ideal and an idealized community of readers. In KnT, just as Theseus aestheticizes his reign,…

Rejects psychological characterizations of Troilus and Criseyde, arguing that they are better seen in light of rhetorical and devotional traditions. Associates Troilus with the ethos of petition and devotion and Criseyde with the pathos.

Analyzes the motif of the reflecting pool in works by Chretien de Troyes, Guillaume de Lorris, Jean de Meun, Chaucer, and John Gower.

Neo-Platonism is the root of medieval depictions of wilderness as a metaphoric landscape of psychological transition and spiritual conversion.

Examines how Chaucer and the Gawain poet explore the legal power of written and spoken words. "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" challenges the potency of oral oaths, WBT parodies courtroom rhetoric, the GP sketch of the Sergeant of Law exposes legal…

WBT, PrT, and SNT all confront the masculine authority of books, the nature of love and marriage, and the nature of feminine authority--issues of female identity and agency. They assert a feminine response to masculine discourse in CT, culminating in…

Both Chaucer and Joyce are incapable of depicting women because the language they use is solipsisticly male and logocentric.

Examines fictional representations of Troy as England's mythic ancestor in TC, HF, Gower's Vox Clamantis, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and other works. Since Troy was thought to have led to later empires only through its fall, the city is an…

Works such as Pearl, PhyT, PrT, and Lydgate's Siege of Thebes present children as transgressive social agents whom society represses through ill treatment to stabilize traditional hierarchies.

Examines personifications of Nature in representative works to argue that allegory is a powerful tool of visionary literature.

Considers issues of gender, identity, and sexuality in depictions of clothing in poetry by Chaucer (Rom), Marlowe, Donne, Samuel Butler, and Milton. Through dress, Rom depicts the richness of desire and the roles of art and culture in both seduction…

Describes classical, biblical, and patristic notions of "counsel" as background to Chaucer's "transcendentalizing notion of counsel."

Legal terminology pertaining to land law is dense in fragments 1 and 2 of CT and in TC. Chaucer used the terms in informed ways and expected his audience to be familiar with their implications.

Explores how classical comedy (especially Plautus and Ovid) and medieval elegiac comedies influenced Chaucer's fabliaux and the fabliau elements of ManT, WBP, TC, and the Prologue to the apocryphal Tale of Beryn.

Assesses gluttony in CT and Piers Plowman, arguing that each presents consumption as both an occasion of the sin and part of its symbolic apparatus. In these works and in scriptural and patristic traditions, gluttony signifies human potential for all…

Seeks to explain how and in what ways illustrations affect reading, discussing the manuscripts of the Harley Psalter, the Old English Illustrated Hexateuch, the Marvels of the East, and the Ellesmere manuscript of CT. Ellesmere raises questions…

Explores conflicts between theories and practice of translation from Geoffrey of Monmouth to Thomas Hoccleve, focusing on how Lollard debates about translation provoked orthodox claims that the vernacular was "pestilential."

Using the electronic Glossarial Database of Middle English, Lay analyzes Chaucer's habits of combining native English vocabulary with Romance vocabulary in doublets and puns, a reflection of his bilingual imagination.

Constructs an Augustinian "rhetoric of youth" to assess the depictions of infancy, childhood, and youth in Boethius's "De consolatione philosophiae," Innocent III's "De miseria condicionis humane," and the "Roman de la rose." Then considers how…

Like Gower in "Confessio Amantis," Chaucer in TC adapts two strategies from Benot de Sainte-Maure's "Roman de Troie" to criticize chivalry: indicating how chivalry oppresses women and revealing the incompatibility of knightly conduct and good…

Medieval romance generally assumes that action is inherently a masculine activity and speech feminine, with both supporting patriarchy. Various English romances examine these assumptions (sometimes ambiguously). WBT employs them to subvert not only…

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).