Browse Items (16472 total)

Analyzes the relationships of "interpretation, authority, and female sexuality" in works by Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Sidney. TC and WBPT contrast a lady seduced by her reading with a woman empowered by hers.

Studies the medieval whore figure as rebel, outlaw, and heretic through historical and sociological analysis of the Norman Latin poem "Jezebel." Chaucer and Langland consider the whore evil but also emblematic of this world's carnal pleasures.…

The pagan prayers of Chaucerian characters are granted twice as often as the Christian ones. Pagan deities function as poetic machinery; the Christian God, as source of divine truth. Throughout his oeuvre, the poet treats prayer in accordance with…

In the Christian Middle Ages, epidemics were perceived as punishment for spiritual sin, though bubonic plague became so widespread as to seem apocalyptic. Grigsby treats "Pricke of Conscience," "Amis and Amiloun," the York Cycle "Moses and Pharaoh,"…

Most studies of the vernacular used in religious writing of the late-fourteenth century focus on clerical authors. Clanvowe, a layperson and chamber knight of Richard II, uses the vernacular to discuss Lollardy covertly. Otey examines works of…

Defines oral performance art as an artistic genre, with written representations of it also manifesting distinctive generic qualities. Ugoretz examines these matters on the basis of contemporary oral performance and analyzes them in relation to five…

Analyzes two works each from late-thirteenth-century Florence and late-fourteenth-century England in relation to the "Roman de la rose" as expressions of political factionalism in the vocabulary of desire. Concludes that "a loyal citizen is still a…

Although Caxton, Thynne, and Speght use comparable techniques to establish Chaucer's works by collating, restoring, and emending texts, their editions reveal various and individual methods.

Male-male intimacy evokes opposing reactions, positive or homophobic. Analyzes male-male bonds from biblical, classical, and medieval literature, including several English and French romances, together with chronicles attacking Edward II's and…

With the linguistic turn from mimetic to generative properties of language, the traditional understanding of many aspects of literary and intellectual history has been denied. Jolliffe questions this extreme position in the light of writers such as…

Medieval male authors, anticipating female resistance to their treatments of Criseyde, often represented her as an example of natural feminine fickleness, leading women to accept this negative view. Doyle examines masculine treatments of Criseyde,…

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the English laity became increasingly literate, in part because readers consumed religious literature to increase their devotion and to achieve personal relationship with God. PrT and SNT, among other…

Focusing especially on love and fortune, Chaucer introduces to English literature the theme of male friendship in conflict with heterosexual love. By Shakespeare's time, this theme was treated even more darkly, moving from "guardedly optimistic…

Although many assume that Chaucer and Langland felt compelled to revise their works to avoid anti-Wycliffite censorship, such censorship was restricted to clerical writing. Chaucer drew on Wycliffite translation techniques to improve his skill, as…

Medieval idealizations of motherhood developed alongside the rising emphasis on the suffering of Christ and the saints. Kuhn discusses works by Jacobus de Voragine, Chaucer (LGW, MLT, ClT, and PrT), Osbern Bokenham, and Margery Kempe. The tradition…

Play and game reveal to knightly protagonists human imperfection and divine truth. Pandarus is the "game-master" of TC, and Troilus achieves perspective through the game of courtly love.

Clerical anti-mercantile views gradually shifted as a "guardedly pro-trade ideology" emerged. Such attitudes also appear in estates satire found in CT, Gower's "Miroir de l'Omme," "Piers Plowman," Margery Kempe, the York cycle plays, and various…

Women in TC and Fernando de Rojas's "Celestina" seek to establish themselves and their fates through "control of language," but rhetorical control gives way as men eventually become subjects and women objects of physical desire.

The traditions of patristic and Franciscan fourfold allegorical interpretation and radical puns are evident in Dante's letter to Can Grande and in Boccaccio, Chaucer (MkT), and Marguerite de Navarre.

Chaucer's representations of the child as pathetic and passive (in Th and PrT) contrasts with images of children in romance ("Havelock the Dane") and miracle tales ("Child Slain by Jews" and "The Jewish Boy"). Chaucer "canonizes" this negative view…

The Sarum liturgy provokes powerful emotional response, as evident in PardT and in "Piers Plowman" (Passus 15; Passus 19).

Examines the "interrelation of equivocation and desire" in PhyT, ClT, FranT, and WBPT, not in what the narrators and characters say, but through a "movement or oscillation between opposed interests." In CT, sexual politics can be found in the…

Postcolonial analysis of post-Conquest attitudes toward France and French in England, considering the formulation of English identity. Williams discusses Chaucer, Corpus Christi plays, Stephen Hawes, John Skelton, Shakespeare, and continuing effects…

The Renaissance elicited mixed responses to machinery. Wolfe discusses reactions to Italian thought by Gabriel Harvey (including the effect on his reading of Chaucer), George Chapman, and Edmund Spenser.

Central to medieval love poetry is the figure of dying for love--found in works by Marcabru, Bernart de Ventadorn, Dante, Petrarch, Chaucer (BD, TC, complaints), and Alain Chartier, as well as in the Harley lyrics and the Findern manuscript. Donne…