Browse Items (16381 total)

Surveys "the idea literary fame" in classical and medieval traditions (Homer, Hesiod, Virgil, Statius, and Dante); analyzes Petrarch's notion more extensively; and examines HF to show that though Chaucer, "like Petrarch, was intimately familiar with…

Traces the origins of the names Elpheta and Algarsyf, used in SqT, to "familial" clusters in Arabic star catalogs that were translated into the Latin Middle Ages and mentioned in Astr. Suggests affiliations of the names with the magic sword and horse…

Describes late medieval literary production in the city of Oxford, characterizing it as a "crossroads for intellectual work of all kinds," summarizing its library holdings, and surveying affiliated literature. Comments on Oxfordian influences on…

Describes late-medieval Breton political status and summarizes the region's literary production in Breton and in French, commenting on drama, Arthurian materials, and religious literature. Includes discussion of the setting of FranT in Brittany as…

Treats London, Southwark, and Westminster as a single "conurbation," summarizing its cultural interweaving of mercantile, courtly, political, and linguistic threads, and describing its literary production and legacy. Includes discussion of Chaucer,…

Describes late medieval literary production in the city of Canterbury and explores its literary affiliations, ummarizing its place in early English Christianity and the impact of Becket's martyrdom. Highlights works produced in Canterbury or written…

Børch discusses Th as an "oral romance," surveying its oral characteristics and exploring how these characteristics - when they are written - help to parody the "chivalric ethos" that underlies the genre of romance. Th also exposes for consideration…

Discusses General Ethan Allen Hitchcock's 1865 published explication of Chaucer's BD. Argues that this study of Chaucer's dream visions offers new insights into "Chaucer's reception in the nineteenth-century United States."

Argues that recent attention to the late-medieval shift from realism to nominalism is attributable to a parallel shift in modern critical assumptions.

Reads Chauntecleer's descent from the perch in NPT as evidence that medieval stage entrances were marked by "masculine assertiveness," useful for clarifying differences among characters in a limited troupe. Compares the narrative scene with dramatic…

Argues that oral/aural and visual aspects of MilT mark it as particularly theatrical, especially in its division of action into upper (John in the tub) and lower (bedroom scene) stages. Similarly, other fabliaux such as RvT and Dame Sirith share…

Evaluates Godwin's "Life of Chaucer" and its impact on the Victorian reception of Chaucer, exploring how the biography critiques "the politics of thinking national literature historically" and challenges "conventional models of literary biography"…

Considers the question of how language may (or may not) preserve technological knowledge over time by commenting on the linguistic features of "Inland English," invented by Russell Hoban in his futuristic novel "Riddley Walker" (1980). Uses…

Explores how Chaucer addresses the sacred authority of hagiography, posing it in tension with the poet's own authority in LGWP, and examining authority and authorization in the "pseudo-hagiographies" of CT (MLT, ClT, and PhyT) where Chaucer…

Uses Chaucer's list of poets of Troy in HF 1460ff. as a "vantage point" to demonstrate how epic catalogs in Middle English Troy narratives are "sites of scepticism towards established truths, questioning the Trojan War, the claims of epic, and poetry…

Examines the role of lists, themes of order and disorder, epistemology and poetics, and tensions between household economy and monetized mercantile accretion (chremastistics) in Douglas's "Palice of Honour" as a response to similar concerns in…

Focuses on the "Chaucerian tree catalogue[s]" in Philip Sidney's "Old Arcadia" and Edmund Spenser's "Faerie Queene," tracing the device as a "subtype of epic catalogue" in classical tradition and in KnT and PF, exploring its narrative,…

Assesses the syntax and rhetorical/literary functions of the "open-ended list that forms part of a sentence," focusing on those composed during the "cultural revolution" at the beginning of the Reformation in sixteenth-century England, but framed by…

Reprints Coghill's modernized poetic versions of GP, KnT, NPT, PardPT, SumT, WBT, ClPT, and FranPT, accompanied by an excerpt from John Gardner's biography of Chaucer and medieval materials in modern English translation (from Boccaccio's "Decameron,"…

Straus explores how ClT, MLT, and PrT adapt and accommodate the traditions and conventions of the family romance to "articulate a profound cultural anxiety about paternity."

"Daungerous," the term Alisoun uses to describe Jankyn's love, reflects an ambiguous relation between courtly love and marriage; canon and civil law clarify the nature of physical and psychological violence in WBP and FranT.

Zaerr explores the concept of "mouvance" (textual variation) as reflected in a performance of "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell," commenting on the process of performance and adaptation and tabulating variants between the manuscript of the…

Examines references to the ages of women in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," WBT, MerT, and Rom in an effort to understand how the ages of women were perceived.

John Shirley lived on the "fringes of the aristocracy," and aspects of the manuscripts he produced suggest that he desired to emulate courtliness in his book production.

Examines the "construction of parenthood" in medieval literature and criticism, focusing on Chaucer's role as "father" of English literature, which lacks a parallel "mother" figure.