Browse Items (16471 total)

Smith posits feminine and masculine modes of the transmission of power and culture from the ancients to the medieval, using "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," the "Alliterative Morte Arthure," and TC to demonstrate the existence of "a feminine means…

Arguing that medieval thought links disability with the feminine, Pearman examines "medieval female disability" in works of Chaucer (WBPT, MerT), Marie de France, Henryson, and Margery Kempe, among others.

Argues that Lydgate's allusions to HF are part of a larger effort to deny the accessibility of truth through language, which the author describes as a "Chaucerian poetics of ambiguity and skepticism."

Discusses dream visions (including HF and "Pearl") and dramas of the period to explore ideas of a "feminized" Christ in the medieval period, ultimately contending that any such feminization is problematic and "no simple affirmation of female bodies…

Explores Western medieval accounts of the Mongols in the context of historic antipathy between "agricultural" societies and their "pastoral"/nomadic rivals. Includes comparative assessments of hunting practices (as seen in BD, "Sir Gawain and the…

Considers writers such as Chaucer, Robert Mannyng, John Mirk, and, most extensively, William Langland in examining the medieval understanding of the parish and its associated individuals and phenomena. As a traditional center of religious practice,…

Through a close reading of various Ricardian texts, Williams examines the building of what appears to be a contemporary anti-Ricardian rhetoric. Astr implies loyalty to English monarchy, rather than personal loyalty to Richard; KnT and Mel offer a…

Considers how "quyting" ("paying back or balancing") among the pilgrims enforces comic harmoniousness and balance in CT, despite the work's fragmentary structure. In addition, CT invites the reader to "'quyt' the author."

Investigates various characterizations of Greeks in Old French and Middle English, including that of Diomede in TC, a depiction "informed by classical ideas and Chaucer's depictions of Jews and Saracens in other works." Troilus, in contrast, is…

Examines Chaucer's declarations of "entente" and their uses in his works, concluding that Chaucer's deployment of the term compels the reader to interpret the texts as "intentional acts"--rather than an arrangement of "exemplary narratives"--thereby…

Suggests that Chaucer's CT, the "Lais" of Marie de France, and the "Book of Margery Kempe" include "theopolitical" ideas and thus are informed by the Church's influence on these ideas and on the notion of identity.

Taylor examines the role of the North as an "uncanny figure" in the development of English nationalism, as evidenced in the works of Bede, William of Malmesbury, the Robin Hood ballads, and CT.

Discusses CT as part of a larger consideration of patience--especially female patience--and notes that Chaucer often links patience with epistemological limits.

Examines "the role of women in literary texts as counselors to kings" in late medieval England, assessing works by Chaucer (LGW and Mel), John Gower, and Stephen Scrope.

Studies "male bereavement in medieval literature," particularly "the authenticity and affective nature of grief among aristocratic males" in Chretién's "Yvain," "Trewe Man," "Sir Orfeo," "Pearl," and BD. In the latter, Chaucer expresses "not…

Argues that the monastic ideal of "contemplative solitude" was an innovative resource in English literature between Richard Rolle and Robert Henryson. Maintains that Chaucer deployed it comically in HF and that, along with notions of Chaucer's…

Investigates how Chaucer, Gower, Langland, Usk, and Hoccleve use confessional discourse to challenge Latinity and "authorize their own literary productions." Includes discussion of the "self-abasing literary self-portrayals as penitents" found in…

Assesses how "mythological heroines from Ovid's "Heroides" and "Metamorphoses" were catalogued, conflated, reconceived, and recontextualized in vernacular literature," particularly as they reflect his "interest in textual revision and his…

Explores the "means and purposes" of Latin literary education in late medieval England, examining the "subject position" imagined for school children in pedagogical materials. Also comments on how Chaucer and Langland evoke a "grammatical nostalgia"…

Includes comments on Cassandra, Persephone, and Philomela as victims of "acquaintance rape" in Chaucer's works (TC, MerT, and LGW), treating his and other versions (classical, medieval, and modern) as adaptations of myths that create "metanarratives…

Includes discussion of the pilgrimage motif of CT and the PardPT as examples of the late-medieval eschatological imagination that manifest the "Augustinian" version of apocalypticism which" subscribed to an expectation of cosmic and personal…

Studies the "role of stigma in determining the social value of a lone woman of loathly proportions or perceptions," discussing a range of texts, medieval to postmodern, including two chapters on WBPT that assess the loathly lady as the "alter ego" of…

Investigates the lexicons of emotion and "codes of masculinity" in a range of late medieval English literary texts, including RvT.

Introduces medieval theory of human voice and nonsense tracing its roots in Aristotle and Boethius, its tradition in medieval logic, and its impact on "The Cloud of Unknowing" and HF. In HF "Chaucer revises academic theories of 'vox' into a theory of…

Examines a series of English literary texts in which "the portrayal of landscape does both elegiac and political work." Includes CT, which "represents a new sphere of civic and economic movement within established space."