Browse Items (16381 total)

Spanish version of Arboleda Guirao's essay "Chaucer's 'Wife of Bath's Prologue' in 'The Canterbury Tales.' The Wife's Personality, Language and Life: Revisiting Feminism," published in 2011.

Examines the righteous-woman-on-trial-motif in "The Earl of Tolous" and its relation to Susanna (Daniel 13) and to medieval romances involving the same motif. By exploiting narrative structure, shifting perspectives and the differing perceptions of…

Maintains that MLT represents cultural and textual transmission through a network of premodern media: voices, texts, bodies, culture, human actions, and nonhuman forces---media which represent an alternative to the hegemonic, institutional, and…

Compares cosmopolitanism in Trevet, Gower, and Chaucer's Constance legends. Establishes that Chaucer's sultan in MLT represents more of an aesthetic cosmopolitan than do his analogues in Trevet and Gower, who portray cosmopolitanism as a means of…

Argues that the name "Strother" in RvT is not a place name but a surname, and suggests a connection between the tale's fictional clerks, John and Aleyn, and two junior members of the prominent Strother family of Northumberland.

Explores the "potential value and pitfalls of reading the literature and drama of this period 'historically.'" Chapter 6 addresses Chaucer and argues that Absolon "defies categorization," but seems to have origins in popular religion and medieval…

Addresses how "manipulations of time" affect the narrative structure of KnT, and "recreate instabilities inherent to fourteenth-century chivalric ideas." Views Theseus, Palamon, and Arcite as the "walking dead," since they only "exist in literature…

Focuses on the episode of "wood-stripping" that occurs in Statius' :Thebaid" (6.84-117), Boccaccio's "Teseida" (11), and KnT (4.2919-62). While Statius' account is the major model for the others, all versions imply social-political criticism,…

Surveys classical and medieval notions of courage ("fortitude") with particular attention to Giles of Rome and chroniclers of the Battle of Agincourt, and recurrent comments on Chaucer's Knight, Squire, and Troilus. Describes the criteria and nuances…

Various associations of sight and death indicate that KnT is a "nightmare vision of vision itself" which, in comparison with Boccaccio's "Teseida," flattens the character of Emelye, intensifies her agency, and indicts chivalry. In KnT the motifs of…

Looks at "late medieval texts in which writing functions both verbally and pictorially," such as texts of the Passion, in which red ink in the manuscript creates a picture of Christ's blood, mentioned in ABC. TC similarly describes tearful verses,…

Includes biographical information, historical context, Chaucer's sources, a pronunciation guide, and glossary of common Middle English words. Chapter 2, "Chaucer's Literature," is a comprehensive guide for beginning readers, and covers Chaucer's…

"Examines the duality of the roles of author and ambassador through a study of the connection between the discourses and practices of authority and diplomacy in the literature of the late medieval and early modern periods." Essays "argue that…

Examines the vice of curiosity, arguing that Chaucer both expands its application from the realm of the intellectual to the realm of the physical, and suggests that poetry may be a cause and a remedy for the desire to inquire into private matters.…

Argues that female bodies in CT represent texts that are unreadable by husbands, and suggests that ultimately, this is symptomatic of an impossibility of "cognitive seeking."

Introduction by Steven Justice. Collection of essays on a range of subjects, including Ricardian public poetry, form and authorship, and the role of the modern annotator. Includes three chapters primarily devoted to CT: "Chaucer's 'New Men' and the…

Documents how editors' presentation of CT as a sequence of fragments is misguided and encourages that the description be abandoned. The term misrepresents the evidence of the manuscripts, and is misleading because Chaucer's discontinuities are…

Considers the use of baptism as a symbol and source of identity in CT.

Series of essays focusing on medieval vernacular literature and "the presence of a text to its own age and the presence of that age within it." Special emphasis on Chaucer in Chapter 6, which examines CT, ABC, and LGW, to "restore the presence of the…

Examines how Astr, Bo, Mel, ParsT, and Ret can encourage readers to develop their own interpretive strategies and move towards autonomy.

In a chapter entitled "Constructing Compilations of Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales'," considers CT through the lens of Walter Benjamin's historical materialism. Teases out three narrative threads by means of "compilational construction." The…

Examines figures of women writers in the work of male authors from Chaucer to Marlowe, with the goal of recovering the woman writer's significance, even in the absence of female-authored direct texts. Includes discussion of TC and Philomela and Dido…

Focuses on the popularity of the Pardoner's character and on the connection between Chaucer and the "Beryn"-poet.

Explores the ambivalence of the forest in several examples, particularly ones drawn from KnT and BD.

Refers to Chaucer in connection with rebellion and violence.