Browse Items (16472 total)

Professional book production and circulation in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, including Chauceriana, present courtly models for gender, eventually affecting rural gentry. The Findern MS revises femininity, and the female voice can be…

Analysis of WBPT, FrT, SumT, ClT, FranT and Ret indicates that Chaucer was "a realist with regard to religion and a nominalist with regard to language and epistemological issues."

A psychoanalytic, Lacanian study of the lover's complaint reveals the fragmented lover as seeking at once wholeness through recognition of his "trouthe" by the lady and union with her. Treats lovers' fantasies and failures in TC, Lydgate, Hoccleve,…

The poetry of the age demonstrates the construction and manipulation of history, while popular culture reflects the changing relations of ruler and laws. Thus "Wynnere and Wasture" treats the 1352 Statute of Treasons. Chaucer's MLT,a poetic revision…

Influenced by literature, the meaning of marriage changed radically in late-medieval England. Replacing the celebration of celibacy as reflecting union with Christ, earthly marriage validated itself in bourgeois ideology, as shown by FranT, Gower,…

Gossip, its meaning shifting from idle woman to idle talk, was treated as sinful and suspect in much clerical literature, including ParsT. Gossip in HF, WBP, and ShT provided Chaucer not only narrative techniques but also a method of experimentation…

In this study of a specialized kind of computer manual, Chaucer's Astr is cited as a prototype and analyzed for its use of three characteristic rhetorical features.

The medieval "ars dictaminis" evolved from fusion of rhetorical theory and letter-writing practice. Though originally an all-male art, epistolary form eventually became accessible to women. Examines PardT and other works.

The sense of individual authorship and the acceptance of English as a literary language were eventually accomplished by Chaucer, who, though he sometimes assumed authority through his guise of translator, became the model for subsequent English…

In his love visions, Chaucer initially claims to be stupefied by love and love poetry. Dalton analyzes this topos-deriving from many sources, including Boethius, the Roman de la Rose, and poems of Machaut-in BD, HF, PF, and TC.

Chaucer's approaches to hagiography vary from ironic distancing in LGW to pious orthodoxy in SNT, preventing audience identification. Also treats Criseyde, Alisoun, and Dorigen. Griselda, a special case, is historicized and then dehistoricized.

Examines the "boundaries between licit and illicit forms of homosocial desire" in communities in late-medieval England. Assesses various texts, including MkPT, FrT, and SumT.

In medieval thinking, cannibalism became a marker setting off the Christian West from the barbarian East. Gradually, cannibalism came to be perceived sometimes figuratively, involving both the self and the other and a sense of identity. Ambrisco…

Explores the medievalism of three contemporary English writers; includes discussion of Chaucerian echoes in John Fowles's "A Maggot."

Experience, here defined in the context of feminist criticism, gives women the capacity to differentiate themselves from others as well as to identify with them. Gendered experience is examined in the works of many authors from antiquity to the…

Lives of virgin martyr saints became a majority in the genre, appealing predominantly to a female audience and providing "expressions of devotion rather than exhortations to devotion." Sanok discusses works of Chaucer, Margery Kempe, Christine de…

The romance knight needs chances to prove himself and achieve fame; he must act. The damsel needs words, often to ask for help. Nickinson treats "Beues of Hamtoun," "The Sowdone of Babylone," Malory's Alysaundir episode, KnT, and FranT, with…

From Old English representations of doomsday to medieval romances, "layered narratives" provide audiences with visual judgment. The fair-to-foul transformations of Old English sermons and "Christ III" give way to the foul-to-fair transformations of…

Study of extant manuscripts from fourteenth-century England reveals that Chaucer was familiar with Ovidian texts and commentaries of his time. He developed his own adaptation of tone and vocabulary, exploring the tension between courtly love and…

Based on two Latin penitential manuals, ParT is shaped to conclude CT with both additions and deletions. Less strictly hierarchical than its major sources, the Tale emphasizes the individual's relationship to God and human society.

Female characters may reveal the weakness or value of male characters. Crocker examines BD and TC, as well as Spenser's "Faerie Queene" and Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew."

Juxtaposition of sixteenth-century editions of works of Chaucer and Langland with Elizabethan plays and pamphlets shows how the later authors use "Reformation-inspired literary traditions" to develop a sense of popular traditions that bind together…

Computer-assisted analysis of "storie" and "tale" in context indicates that Chaucer uses them differently. "Storie" typically appears in relation to the historical, courtly, and clerical, associated with public memory and authority. "Tale" refers to…

Source study of "Ywain and Gawain," "Sir Launfal," and NPT that explores how the process of appropriation reflects social, economic, political, and ideological continuities and transformations.

Meanings of the words "women," "authority," and "language" change throughout Chaucer's works, depending on the complex and shifting relationships of speaker, persona, scribe, and audience, plus pervasive irony. Treats TC, LGW, ClT, FranT, and SNT.