Browse Items (16381 total)

Close comparative analysis of CT and Boccaccio's "Decameron," arguing that they present "pragmatic prudence" or "expediential calculation" as essential forms of human agency in negotiating limited knowledge, faulty perception, and cultural turmoil.…

Opens a volume of essays on the journalistic practice of "painting a picture [of a person] in words," including discussion of the depiction of a "cross-section of Chaucer's contemporary English society" in CT--in GP and elsewhere--with particular…

Richard II's reign produced political upheaval that redefined treason not only politically but also as reflected in literary depictions of love.

When an angry God of Love accuses the narrator of a breach of faith, Alceste rebukes the god for believing false counselors. This action reflects the political situation of Chaucer's time. The Lord's Appellant had attacked Richard II's corrupt…

ClT reflects aspects of Richard II's life and philosophy of kingship--and perhaps Chaucer's fanciful solutions to Richard II's political dilemma of an heirless realm: divorce or a consort advisor. The insistence on "obedience to authority" in ClT…

Assesses graphic representations of selected features of spoken language to show the "dialectical homogeneity" of the Ellesmere manuscript (London), Cambridge Gg 4.27 (East Midland with Northern elements), and British Library Additional 5140 (East…

Explores the relationship between gender and subjectivity in the works of Chaucer, assessing from a feminist critical perspective the traditional "adulation" of the poet. Hansen examines the "feminization" of Chaucer's characters and narrators and…

Although Chaucer criticism divides into prefeminist, feminist, and postfeminist eras, postfeminist criticism often lapses into prefeminist exclusion of female readers and critics by assuming transhistorical categories of the masculine and feminine…

Hansen reaffirms the importance of the Wife of Bath to feminist criticism but also argues that her character is the creation of a male poet: the reader must not readily take the Wife as an authority, "as a female speaker or subject or as a…

LGW is a "poem for and about men and their anxieties about sex and gender." Courtly love is incompatible with the patriarchal drive to dominate. The subject of LGW is "male homosocial desire."

LGW satirizes the narrator's perspective on women rather than examining feminine virtue. Obvious distortions of the legends reveal the deficiency of the narrator's attitude: he idealizes women in passivity, irrationality, and stupidity.

The Wife of Bath's reference to being beaten by Jankyn and the rape in WBT indicate the violent nature of sex, yet the text glosses over this violence, making it seem normal. Although Chaucer's position as poet may have inclined him to identify with…

Expresses concerns about contemporary higher education--from "prevailing careerism to the overall decline in literary reading"--and encourages "Chaucerian values" among university administrators.

Like Abraham, Griselda is justified or made perfect by works, evidenced by her willingness to sacrifice her children. Through three clothing changes, she becomes an emblem of salvation: the first change symbolizes baptism; the second, the trial of…

Includes discussion of Chaucer's works (pp. 35-45), commenting on the idealized settings found in BD, PF, and LGWP in comparison with their sources; also comments on the lack of such settings in TC and CT.

To emphasize the theme of Troilus' misconception of the nature of love and to make his poem reflect the stages of "gradus amoris," Chaucer placed the consummation scene at the numerical center of the "beta" version of TC.

Compares PhyT with its sources in Livy and the "Roman de la Rose" to argue that Chaucer's retelling characterizes the Physician as amoral, consistent with the GP description.

Interprets details of physiognomy in the characterizations of Alison and Absolon in MilT; hers indicate her "availability"; his, his timidity and foppishness.

Comments on Chaucer's interest in the physiognomic implications of Criseyde's joined eyebrows in relation to his sources.

Describes Chaucer's uses of physiognomic details in GP, PardPT, KnT, RvT, WBP, Th, and NPT, arguing that while he used such details for imagery he "only rarely relies on physiognomy alone to delineate character."

Argues that the "ongoing negotiations between experience and authority, flesh and spirit, nature and the divine, are fluid, bidirectional, and mutually dependent" in PF. The poem depicts a cacophonous set of voices and demonstrates that the…

Surveys translations and studies of medieval English literature produced in the People's Republic of China, commenting on the important role of Professor Li Fu-ning and describing translations, theses and dissertations, and critical books and essays.…

Analyzes how Chaucer''s uses of sailing and door/gates imagery in TC resonate with similar imagery in Ovid's "Amores" and "Ars amatoria," reflecting a differing view of history and producing a different tone. In English, with an abstract in English…

Summarizes medieval attitudes toward dreams and traces their roots in the Bible and classical tradition, emphasizing their prophetic qualities. Then discusses dream vision conventions and their uses in "Pearl," "Piers Plowman," and several shorter…

Explores "what constitutes 'life' in hagiographical literature" and medieval life-writing in general, focusing on "philosophical and organic categories of life" rather than "political, social, and ecclesiastic content." Assesses Walter Daniel's "Life…