Browse Items (16472 total)

Violence, induced by the impermissible crossing of borders, involves clashing social codes and evokes varying attitudes: Beowulf authorizes it; Juliana opposes it; "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and MilT develop its ambiguities. Sir Gawain poses a…

Feminist criticism has changed perceptions of the Wife of Bath. Feminist critics perceive her not as a superficial and "garish caricature" of womanhood but as a serious person attempting to establish her identity, rejecting antifeminist tradition,…

Examines various ways gender, ethnicity, and disease interact with social class in selected texts. In MLT, race is less important than place in salvation history. The tale of Lucrece (LGW) seeks to keep women virginal for marital traffic. Erotic…

Explores how Caxton's technical and mechanical modifications of CT, Bo, Malory's "Morte Darthur," and the "Boke of Eneydos" claim authority for these texts and help to shape their audience.

Readers of medieval allegory look for meaning but find themselves obliged by many factors to revise their interpretations. Even the literal sense proves highly complex, seeming to shift as it develops, so that readers must reconsider. Moore analyzes…

Discusses how the narrative strategies and implied audiences of animal fables produce the didactic impact of the tales, assessing "The Owl and the Nightingale" and fables by Chaucer (NPT and ManT), Gower, Langland, Lydgate, and Henryson. Also…

Assesses the status of CT and three eighteenth-century novels as "transitional texts" between orality and literacy, examining such features as voicing, framing devices, and insecurity about the social and moral roles of the texts.

Entry into heaven and the approach to God properly conclude a pilgrimage, as represented by Dante and Alain de Lille. In ManPT, Chaucer inverts the topos to show logic and language vitiated (not transcended) as the Cook becomes literally drunk (not…

Late-medieval liturgical activities--especially benefactions and the education that lay behind them--resulted from a variety of conditions and motives and produced a volatile environment that influenced the rise of vernacular literacy.

Anatomizes the development of anti-Jewish sentiments in medieval England, arguing that the prejudices of Chaucer and his late-medieval contemporaries, which returned to traditional, exegetical stereotypes, were less malicious than those of the…

Completed in 1513, Douglas's was the first and only full translation of Virgil's "Aeneid" into an English vernacular until Dryden's. The status of Middle English as a literary vehicle had been established by Chaucer. Douglas did the same for Middle…

Fables present a worldlier view than do Christian bestiaries, and neither genre presented a worldview full enough for Chaucer or other writers. Fable became more Christian, developing witty moralization, sharply drawn personae, and more vivid style…

At the crux of chronicle and romance, Geoffrey of Monmouth's "Historia" provides much of the basis for later literature. The work emphasizes women not only as child bearers but also as speakers who could uphold or deny legitimacy. Barefield discusses…

Fourteenth-century English dialogue between Wycliffite heresy and religious orthodoxy brought a redefinition of authorship and authority.

Explores the sociocultural influence of sacerdotal celibacy on literature. Capable of performing the Mass, the "special body" of the priest became a literary icon, aligned with the Latin language in opposition to Lollardy. Lay writing emerged against…

Unlike other authors of chivalric romance of his time, Chaucer manipulates medieval theories of rhetoric to reveal how the relations of authority and discourse define both the pilgrim narrators and the characters in their tales. Treats WBPT, KnT,…

Although Christian marriage was well defined by theologians in the twelfth through the thirteenth centuries, the proper role of sexuality remained debatable, as shown in the west portal of Senlis Cathedral, in Jean de Meun's introduction of the…

Describes the social and economic status of the "femme sole" in late medieval England, and discusses the role of the figure in select Paston letters, the Book of Margery Kempe, and CT, particularly the Guildsmen, the WBPT, MerT, ShT, and the…

Examines ethical questions raised by medieval literature for modern readers in the light of modern philosophical studies (Jean-FranƯois Lyotard, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Nancy), as shown in LGW (literature and history), Piers Plowman…

Defines anti-Semitic art as any work that employs pejorative stereotypes about Jews without repudiating them. Focuses on Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice" but also considers PrT and Marlowe's "The Jew of Malta."

The clash of realist Thomistic Christianity (Dante) and nominalism (Ockham) provides the basis of Chaucer's exuberant satire on philosophy, linguistics, classical tradition, the state of the Church, and other late-fourteenth-century issues. HF…

Focuses on the association of preaching and the preacher's body in medieval tradition, exploring the association through traditional identification of women and the body. Women preachers of hagiographic tradition and various exemplary women…

Examines Wycliffite sermons and the opposing views of William Thorpe and Nicholas Love to compare Lollard and orthodox views of narrative and of the individual. Chaucer's awareness of the conflict, his refusal to take sides, and the futility of…

These works use the language and motifs of love to distinguish gendered passion. In particular, the diction and imagery of love associated with Criseyde in TC show her, unlike the male characters, to be motivated more by fear and a sense of honor…

Traces the development in English literature of attempts to "establish a poetic language mimetic of God's Logos." Explores writers from Chaucer to Eliot.