Browse Items (16382 total)

Considers the validity and applicability of the critical concepts of "reading lesbian" and "reading queer," briefly suggesting the implications of imagining lesbian and queer audiences for readings of MerT.

Unlike "free-indirect discourse," Bakhtin's "hybrid discourse" readily allows analysis of written and spoken language in narrative, especially in texts before 1900. The portrait of the Squire, hybridizing both estates satire and "Le Roman de la…

Analyzes varying treatments of the "sergeant" character in Chaucer, the Anonymous French, Petrarch, and Boccaccio by considering the character's rhetorical effect in each. Rather than imitating a character either cruel (as in the French) or not-cruel…

Considering such works as "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida," and PardPT, the author identifies finitude and nothingness as the roots of despair in late medieval and early modern works, as well as in modern…

Argues for the influence of the Eros and Psyche myth on Boccaccio's Griselda tale, and thereby on ClT.

Historical analysis of early women's speech; describes early modern England's regulations of women's speech and women's subversive strategies to represent themselves as subjects in masculine discourses (including court depositions). Examines speech…

Nicknames for geometric propositions occur in TC ("dulcarnon," "flemyng of wrecches") and one seems to be at play at the end of SumT ("figura demonis"), where the squire's "natural" solution to the problem of dividing the fart opposes the…

Studies the tradition in which God speaks through humans and the proto-reformation implications of literary texts where the laity use speech usually reserved for priests. Chapter 4, "Cursed Speakers," considers the carter's and old woman's curses in…

Discusses fairies and elves within medieval romances and folklore. Analyzes Chaucer's use of "fayrye" in the MerT, "fairy mistresses" in Th, and the "fairy woman" in the WBT.

References to "Lameth" in WBT and SqT comprise links in a sturdy chain connecting the tragic actions of Shakespeare's prince of Denmark to Lamech, a "(pseudo-)biblical figure associated with murder, rage, and vengeance."

Considers WBPT and SNPT, along with woman writers of the 13th-15th centuries, as part of the development of a female "subject consciousness." Also examines Grisilde in ClT.

Explores the "cultural geography" of blindness in medieval literature, art, and religious texts of England and France. Includes discussion of MLT.

Assesses Chaucer's presentation of women in TC, LGW, and CT (especially MLT) for the various ways that he invigorates them as characters to give them voice and dimension.

Considers Custance of MLT to be an exception to the medieval stereotype of the barbarous female founder of a society.

Chaucer and Gower both adapted the story of Constance from the Anglo-Norman chronicle of Trevet. A comparison of the proper names, institutional terms, and speeches shows that Gower closely follows Trevet while Chaucer modifies the story in MLT.

Chaucer's use of the interjection "Oo" in KnT (2533) is adduced as a stage in the history of "Ahoy" going back to the Anglo-French verb "oir" (to hear, listen).

Focuses on Anglo-Saxon architecture and poetry and draws connections between physical spaces and literary texts. Argues that Anglo-Saxon buildings should be viewed as "dynamic spaces" to enrich an understanding of development of Anglo-Saxon…

Coleman argues that Philippa of Lancaster, oldest legitimate daughter of John of Gaunt and queen of Portugal from 1387, sponsored the Portuguese and Castilian translations of Gower's "Confessio" Amantis. Philippa may also have been responsible for an…

Argues against reading Emelye as absent or purely symbolic and instead posits her as having a more complex subjectivity that can be more fully accessed when reading KnT alongside Boccaccio's "Teseida." Close reading of Emelye's prayer to Diana shows…

Examines "The King of Tars," "The Siege of Jerusalem," and KnT in order to demonstrate that identity, however embodied, was unfixed in these works and perhaps in the later Middle Ages at large.

Uses KnT as a sample premodern text to support a critical approach "equally as concerned with literary ideals as it is with projects of subversion."

Contemplates issues of determinism and free will in KnT and WBPT. KnT is viewed as "deterministic," which in turn is countered by the Wife, as well as ClT and SNT.

In the context of the biblical passages alluded to in a couplet evoking "gem-encrusted plows," it is worth noting that in Blake's depiction of the Canterbury Pilgrims, "he represented the Plowman as a medieval version of himself."

A sourcebook of "fifteen centuries of history" about the historical, social, political, and religious development of pilgrimages. Includes a section on "Pilgrimage and Piety in the Late Middle Ages," with an abridged version of GP, pp. 325-30.…

Uses CT as a source of data for a linguistic study of hyperbole, particularly for diachronic case studies in Chapter Six. Charts Chaucer's hyperbolic use of a few, selected words. In Chapter Seven, suggests that Chaucer uses hyperbole in GP to…