Explores how the figure of a drunken man, originating in Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" and "De topicis differentiis," and used by Chaucer in Arcite's complaint in KnT, I.1260–67, "blurs the line between universal and particular" and…
Treats as "neighboring texts" Chaucer's account of Pedro I of Castile and Leon (MkT 7..2375-90) and that of Pere Lopez de Ayala in "Cronica del rey don Pedro," theorizing the notion of "neighbor"; exploring the inclusions, omissions, and enigmas of…
Adapts the "gift theory" of Jacques Derrida; considers the historical context of the marriage of John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster; and focuses on the scene of White's ring-giving (as reported by the Black Knight), considering the poem itself as…
Treats the Old Man of PardT as a figure of the Wandering Jew, exploring relations between the figure and the transtemporal materiality of relics, and linking it with "other explicit and implicit references to Jews" in the depiction of the Pardoner…
Explores how John Gower's tomb in Southwark lent "authority" to the character of Gower-as-chorus in Shakespeare and George Wilkins's play "Pericles." Includes examination of how the title pages, commemorative verses, and Chaucer's portrait in Thomas…
Analyzes the "quotidian vocality of the medieval chicken yard" in John Lydgate's and Robert Henryson's versions of the "cock and jewel" fable, focusing on how avian vocality draws attention to the pace and meaning of the rhyme-royal verse form of the…
Explores scribal errors in copying and comprehending details regarding classical characters and classical allusions in poetry, and how poets' phrasing implies awareness of those risks and seeks to mitigate them. These problems in transmission reveal…
Drimmer, Sonja.
Exemplaria 29.3 (2017): 175-94. 7 color illus.
Argues that medieval "media consciousness," despite the lack of "verbal declarations of such awareness," is evident in the text-image relations of the Chaucer portrait in manuscripts of Thomas Hoccleve's "Regiment of Princes," coining the term…
Examines exegetical interpretations of and allusions to the story of Ruth. Chaucer's allusion to Ruth in LGWP expresses alienation and belatedness and asserts poetic privilege and the interpretive creativity of marginality.
Explores the possibilities for a "woman's language" through Bakhtinian theories of discourse. Through dialogic, double-voiced discourse, Chaucer's Griselda and Shakespeare's Viola each break into and subvert the dominant patriarchal discourse in…
Drawing on the superflat movement in Japanese contemporary art, argues that cuteness in Th effects a compression of the text's narrative layers and semiotic networks. Mirroring the horizontal, non-linear organization of the poem's layout in medieval…
Silva, Chelsea.
Exemplaria 30 (2018): 49-65; 3 color illus.
Considers the medieval folding almanac as a tool to access information, examining British Library, MS Harley 937, the prologue of which uses Astr "to explain its intention to satisfy its uneducated reader," posing Astr as a "model for its…
Argues that in their ordering of Chaucer's text and in their various and dynamic forms, manuscripts of CT successfully instantiate Chaucer's dynamic idea of his text, the complex conditions for pre-print book production, and the disaggregated forms…
Discusses kitsch as a "counter aesthetic" that results from a "failed dialectic of beauty and ugliness," and explores the Nazis' "Anti-Kitsch Law," Theodor Adorno's aesthetic theory, the Prioress's "countrefete cheere" and sentimentality, the gore…
Frames an assessment of literary theory with opening and closing comments on TC, claiming that, at the end of the poem, "Chaucer, in effect, is doing theory" and, by doing so, "converts his text into something residual and emergent, pleasurable and…
Little, Katherine C.
Exemplaria 31 (2019): 117–28.
Disagrees with "theorists of materiality" who regard lists as "transparent," or "utopian, or egalitarian, or decentering." Examines how the list of "thynges" in KnT (3017ff.), though different from the analogous list in Boccaccio's "Teseida," "makes…
Situates the digital humanities (DH) within media history by arguing that DH depends upon collocation of visual, perspectivistic technology and artistic pursuit, as does anamorphosis. Exemplifies anamorphosis by means of Hans Holbein's "The…
Explores the conventionality/unconventionality of plot, detail, and image in "The Floure and the Leafe," arguing that its depiction of "literary nature" presents "poetry as a shared and participatory tradition: a carefully maintained garden from…
Offers a psychoanalytical reparative reading of PrT, focusing on PrP, the conclusion of the tale, and various intertexts (Psalm 8; the "Alma Redemptoris Mater"; and Dante's "Purgatorio," XXXIII), unpacking interplays between utterance and intention;…
Reads aspects of Theseus's stadium, tournament, and funeral arrangements in KnT as "performance of power" in response to the procession of his "regional rivals": Arcite and Palamon of Thebes, Emetreus of India, and Lygurge of Thrace. George…
Combines neighbor theory with Pauline notions of debt, payment, and the "dual commandment" to love God and neighbor, exploring usury, neighborly obligation, Christian-Jewish proximity, and market economy in "The Childe of Bristowe" and PrT--found…
Uses a "political theology of the refugee as neighbor" to explore contiguities between "Refugee Tales" (2016) and CT. Explicates nuances of "tendre/"tender" in the works and examines the absent presence of Theban refugees in KnT. The Knight "edits…
Considers the "temporal hybridity" of the Kelmscott Chaucer and the challenge it poses to classification. Neither strictly functional book nor decorative object, the Kelmscott mirrors the Middle Ages' abjectness and highlights medievalism's purchase…
Considers the Pardoner in PardT as an "exemplary figure" of what Walter Benjamin argues is a defining trait of modernity: the eclipse of religion's sacralizing capacities by capitalism, which, like the Pardoner's sales pitch, intensifies guilt rather…
"Glossa Ordinaria" and NPT demonstrate the medieval tendency to accompany a base text with another, more interpretive one, generating further discourse, discouraging closure, and resulting in compound, sometimes conflicting, interpretations or…
