Browse Items (16381 total)

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…

Transmission of ancient Greek and Roman culture through Ovid to later tradition affected romance and shaped attitudes in popular literature. Heyworth discusses works by Marie de France, Chrétien de Troyes, Chaucer (with emphasis on politics in the…

Although many editors and critics of medieval literature assume a single authoritative text, literary authority may be diffuse. Crowley examines in detail the B and C versions of "Piers Plowman." Also treats the frame of Gower's "Confessio Amantis"…

The remoteness and insularity of England led to the belief that its people were different, both barbarian and angelic. Lavezzo discusses Aelfric, Higden, Chaucer (MLT), and the alliterative "Morte Arthure." Use of the English language contributed to…

Traces the Theban legend from Statius through a twelfth-century Old French version, school texts, florilegia, commentary, Boccaccio, Chaucer (Anel, KnT), and Lydgate. Also assesses relationships with ancient and medieval history. Lydgate's version…

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.

Examines loathly ladies in Irish myth, Chaucer (WBT), Gower ("Florent"), Dame Ragnell, Thomas of Erceldoune, and ballads, focusing on two loci--court and forest--and kinds of power. Also examines the political significance of the refiguration of…

Authorial development from pastoral toward epic provides a universal creative basis, analogous to the human life span and close to nature. Assesses works by Plato, Virgil, Chaucer (BD), Milton, and Vladimir Nabokov (as lepidopterist).

Dante and Chaucer elaborate on the three aspects of the classical goddess who appears as "Proserpina in hell, Diana on earth, and Luna" in heaven. Medieval commentary associates her with memory. Chaucer treats her recurrently, sometimes parodically,…

The late-medieval sense of individualism (identified by New Historicists) produced anxiety among writers, including Chaucer, Lydgate, and Hoccleve. Through various genres, these writers show a need to redefine sovereignty.

In fourteenth-century England, the sale of indulgences was supported by orthodoxy and attacked by Wycliffites. Poetic fictions transcend this simple opposition, as seen in the artful deviousness of PardT and the revitalized idealism of "Piers…