Browse Items (16381 total)

Treats various characters of CT as figures in or of isolation: Arcite (KnT), John (MilT), Constance (MLT), Friar John (SumT), Thomas (SumT), and the Pardoner. As such, they share characteristics with figures in Old English poetry.

Studies the historical underpinnings of the GP descriptions of the Knight and Squire and discusses KnT and SqT for the ways they reflect the development of the Squire's "Romantic Chivalry" out of the Knight's "Religious Chivalry," questioning the…

Traces the theme of the decline of the world in biblical and medieval tradition, examining three literary texts: Bernard of Cluny's "De Contemptus Mundi," John Gower's "Confessio Amantis," and ClT, where the virtues of "steadfastness and patience"…

Argues that the Merchant's attitudes are reflected in the views of Justinus (not January) in MerT.

Reads the Pandarus/Troilus relationship in TC as a variation on the priest/pupil motif also found in works by Ovid, Andreas Capellanus, Guillaume de Lorris, Jean de Meun, and John Gower.

Discusses how origins of the meaning of TC are "decentred" on different levels. Argues that complicated use of external sources obfuscates the meaning of the text and that the subject-positions of Pandarus and the narrator create a "disruption" in…

Examines what "medieval romances convey about the possibilities for female social and cultural influence" during the Middle Ages. Chapter 1 analyzes how Chaucer's depictions of Cassandra and Criseyde were influenced by "representations of women's…

Proposes a theoretical framework, a "double prism structure," to examine ambiguity attributable to textual, interpersonal, and linguistic "domains" in TC.

Reflects on secrecy and fear in confessional moments in several works, including TC.

Argues that "Inferno" V does not justify dismissing Francesca's love for Paolo as "lust," given the continuity between the "disiato riso" that leads them to kiss and the "santo riso" of Beatrice that draws Dante upward to Paradise. Echoing Dante and…

Contends that metaphors of hunting in TC and the alliterative "Morte Arthure" are intended for a noble audience, and in turn, they shape that audience's attention to ideas of love and chivalry.

Though medieval orthodoxy insisted on the reality of free will, TC presents three characters subject to fortune at every turn, perhaps because they are pre-Christian pagans. Troilus is a victim of fortune from the moment he sees Criseyde. Pandarus…

Treats TC and Thomas Walsingham's "Ditis ditatus" as the two major Troy narratives of late fourteenth-century England, considering the influences of Dictys and Dares (along with Boccaccio) on the two works, and focusing on their depictions of various…

Looks at Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida" in the context of its medieval legacy, including works by Chaucer, Lydgate, and Henryson, to argue that Shakespeare "continues an important late medieval poetic tradition, which highlights the problematic…

Analyzes LGW as "a narrative treatise on the 'affect of invention,'" linking the processes of emergence that precede the mind's conscious recognition of emotion with the inventional processes which culminate in poetic art. LGWP introduces a method…

Explores the influence of Italian and French vernacular versions of Ovid's "Heroides" on the legends of LGW, where Chaucer engages and undermines the historical emphasis of these vernacular versions and reasserts the literary, rhetorical authority of…

Explains how the "vernacular rising" expanded Chaucer's and Gower's readership to include "lesser merchants and prosperous artisans" (Introduction and Chapter 1). Chapters 4 and 5 emphasize LGW. In contrasting Gower and Chaucer, argues that in LGW,…

Uses HF, which sets "archival totality" in an uncertain relation to the experience of reading, to introduce a discussion of how in our reading "discursive systems, rather than particular texts, become objects of knowledge." Aims to theorize a…

Explores the "literary negotiation of the macabre aesthetic in Middle English literature." Chapter 2, "The Progress of the Dead: From Body to Revenant," discusses "'physical' return of the dead" in BD and PrT.

Focuses on themes of gender, sexuality, and melancholy, through analysis of "productive potential" of idleness in BD.

Examines a diverse range of authors from the fourteenth to the early eighteenth centuries for their political, philosophical, and scientific perspectives in order to map a movement away from a trust in collective experience and toward a focus on the…

Referencing SqT and MLT, maintains that Astr was literally meant for a juvenile audience, adducing its concise language, repetition, exhaustive definitions, and liberal use of adjectival possessives as pedagogical tools fit for young readers. Posits…

Echoes of Peraldus's notion of sin as "amor inordinatus" in the section of ParsT on contrition and confession, thought to have been adapted primarily from Pennaforte, suggest that the former's "Summa de vitiis" "exerts a more significant influence on…

The Parson is exceptional among the Canterbury Pilgrims for his corporeal invisibility; his GP portrait gives no corporeal details and ParsPT efface his body, along with fiction, verse, and the colors of rhetoric. Moreover, ParsT displays hostility…

Discusses nominalism, speech, and power in ManT, along with speech and rhetoric in Gower's "Confessio Amantis," Langland's "Piers Plowman," and works of Hoccleve.