Ashe, Laura.
Modern Language Review 101 (2006): 935-44.
If reading is a transformative act, then Griselda's unwavering "reading" of Walter as a loving husband ultimately transforms him so that Walter's will conforms with hers. Thus, her association with the Clerk (especially as aligned against the…
Ashe, Laura.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 42 (2020): 111-46.
Maintains that "medieval thought was continually pushed toward true contradictions . . . despite [the] impossibility imposed by classical logic," citing Aristotle, Abelard, Jean Buridan, Aquinas, and modern thinkers such as Hegel and Graham Priest…
Ashley, Kathleen M.
Julian N. Wasserman and Lois Roney, eds. Sign, Sentence, Discourse: Language in Medieval Thought and Literature (Syracuse, N. Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1989), pp. 272-93.
From preaching tradition Chaucer borrowed the "topos" of renaming the sins "to make them seem more attractive to sinners," a "topos" that took two major forms: "a narrative "exemplum" about the Devil's unmarriageable daughters," and a "non-narrative…
Ashton, Gail, and Daniel T. Kline, eds.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Collection of essays exploring how medievalisms and medieval elements are reclaimed and reconceptualized in contemporary print and digital texts, TV, and film. For an essay pertaining to Chaucer, search for Medieval Afterlives in Popular Culture…
Ashton, Gail, and Louise Sylvester, eds.
New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Nine essays on pedagogical topics by various authors, with web resources, suggestions for further reading, and index. The introduction (by Ashton) emphasizes the need for teachers to facilitate active learning. For individual essays, search for…
Collection of essays covers a comprehensive range of medieval-related media, including literature, film, TV, comic-book adaptations, electronic media, performances, and commercial merchandise and tourism. For three essays that pertains to Chaucer,…
An introduction to CT, designed to enable students to approach the poem on their own. Includes sections on style and narrative technique; voice, narration, and form; and themes,tensions, and ambiguities--each with explanatory discussion,summary of…
Griselda's response to Walter at crucial points in the narrative--when he has "killed" her children and when he has banished her from the palace so he can take another "wife"--underscores his appalling behavior and demonstrates the ways outward…
In MLT, Gower's tale of Constance, and Émaré, the role of daughter--the woman cast adrift--is ambiguous, entailing both helplessness and independence, subversion and female power. Such tales reflect the notion of the daughter moving from…
Ashton, Gail.
London and New York : Routledge, 2000.
Analyzes the voices in medieval vernacular saints' lives: the controlling masculine voice and the submerged and subversive feminine voice. Defines female hagiography as a genre separable from male hagiography. French feminist critics (Cixous and…
Ashton, Gail.
Literature and Theology 16: 235-47, 2002.
Uses Luce Irigaray's notion of the "ethics of alterity" to explore the fusion of masculine and feminine in the depiction of angels in several medieval narratives, including Marian accounts and Chaucer's and Bokenham's stories of St. Cecilia. In SNT…
An introduction to CT designed for student use, with questions for discussion, research suggestions, and a review at the end of several topical sections: (1) biography and socioliterary setting; (2) language, style, and form; (3) reading CT; (4)…
Surveys the array of Chaucer biographies derived sequentially from early accounts and editions, portraits, life records, literature, and popular culture, including recent blogging. Describes Chaucer's early entry into court life, his court duties,…
Outlines the literary and social contexts in which late medieval English romances were produced. Assesses a number of these romances and their "afterlives," exploring their gender affiliations, uses of symbols, concerns with familial and cultural…
Study guide to CT, arranged topically, with sections that introduce the Host, the narrator, and other "voices"; genre and the relations of teller and tale; and several thematic concerns: ideal womanhood and its subversion, writing and authority, and…
Textbook edition of NPPT in modern translation, lineated as verse, with brief introduction to Chaucer's life and language, and critical commentary keyed to sections of the narrative. The commentary includes summaries of the narrative sections, brief…
Askins, William R.
Laura L. Howes, ed. Place, Space, and Landscape in Medieval Narrative (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2007), pp. 27-41.
Askins treats Mars and Ven as two halves of a single poem, reading them together as the "first epithalamium" in English, a celebration of the marriage that took place in spring 1386 between Elizabeth of Lancaster (daughter of Gaunt) and John Holland.…
Askins, William.
John V. Fleming and Thomas J. Heffernan, eds. Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 2, 1986 (Knoxville, Tenn.: New Chaucer Society, 1987), pp. 103-12.
The subject matter and "didactic thrust" of Mel may have been inspired by the political unrest and Parliamentary disputes of 1386-88. The neglected Mel should be studied again with the care and enthusiasm that went into its writing.
Askins, William.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 7 (1985): 87-105.
Details in ManT parallel the character and life of Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix; this is consistent with the tale's interest in gossip and aristocratic misbehavior.
Askins, William.
Robert M. Stein and Sandra Pierson Prior, eds. Reading Medieval Culture: Essays in Honor of Robert W. Hanning (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), pp. 271-89.
Askins reads Th for details that reflect Anglo-Flemish relations during the Hundred Years War. He identifies heraldic details, commercial concerns, and echoes of the Ghent war of 1379-84.
Aspinall, Dana E.
University of Mississippi Studies in English 11-12 (1993-95): 230-42.
A psychoanalytic reading of the Pardoner that views him as one who struggles to escape the influence of his father-figure (God) and simultaneously to escape literary models posed in the Bible. Freud and Harold Bloom enable us to see the struggle…
