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Although Chaucer and Christine de Pisan showed themselves well aware of the distorting mirror of gender constructions by men, the Renaissance produced even more misogynist views, especially in Jacobean domestic tragedy. Shakespeare, however,…

The pendant in the Ellesmere and Hoccleve portraits of Chaucer is a "penner" (not an ampulla, as previously argued), referring specifically to Chaucer as a writer. The penner, coupled with the rosary held by the poet in a number of portraits,…

Chaucer's dream poems reflect the self-consciousness of "mise en abyme"--literally, "setting of the abyss"--used here to identify Chaucer's means of drawing attention to structural and thematic circularity and to poetics. …

Although the concept of solitude is considered a Renaissance phenomenon, it occurs often in Chaucer's works as "alone" or "privity" and in the concept of private space, such as Nicholas's room in MilT. The "struggle for personal space" was an…

Tallies eleven texts in thirty-three manuscripts, arranged and described under three headings: translations of the Latin "Trotula" (cited in WBP), versions of "The Sekenesse of Women," and related texts. Explores the readership of these texts and…

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…

The immobile house of Fame and the whirling cage of rumor are linked to each other much as a subject and a predicate are. FrT and SumT are held together by Chaucer's sense of sentences as "full-blown speech acts": in the former, the same words are…

Like Chaucer, Margery Kempe constructs a narrative context for the self she creates. Kempe uses autobiographical details to shape "Margery" into a representative type and to analyze communal values and practices. Kempe employs Chaucer's strategy of…

Curry's and Robertson's critical efforts seek to disclose stable, authoritative meaning; they reflect the hermeneutics of Hirsch, concerned with finding valid interpretation. The efforts of Aers and Patterson reflect Gadamer's reconstruction of…

Analyzes medieval theory of dreams, tracing development from late antiquity to the late Middle Ages. In theory, in literature, and in life, dreams were regarded as both potentially deceptive and potentially illuminating. The work concentrates on…

A survey of issues in Chaucer study, designed to help students prepare for examinations.

Fourteenth-century business practices, financial transactions,and fluctuating currency rates illuminate the characters of the ShT monk (a cloth merchant) and the GP Merchant, who probably would have chosen to travel in April, when the relative values…

With few exceptions, medieval German and English texts depict female authority figures as truth-tellers. Female saints reveal the falseness of male antagonists, but queens lose their power to men who lie, act violently, and rule efficiently. CT…

Considers a potential crisis in the teaching of Chaucer and suggests attending more to the pragmatic matters of teaching and less to theoretical problematizing.

Considers BD, ABC, Pity, and HF to be Chaucer's "Edwardian" poetry, produced when he was closely associated with the royal family--first with the households of Elizabeth of Ulster and her husband, Prince Lionel, and then with the king's household.

Though they are continuous copies, made without hesitation, surviving manuscripts of TC contain embedded features of their predecessors. The features we infer from extant copies may belong to immediate exemplars used by the scribes of those copies…

A collection of original essays by friends and students of Donald R. Howard--Oliver H. Palmer Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University--who died in 1987 at the age of fifty-nine.
For individual essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for…

Alexander Pope wrote a youthful imitation of HF Book 3, entitled the Temple of Fame. Pope's imitation of Chaucer and his reworking of that imitation in the Dunciad show he had assimilated Chaucer's troubling thoughts about the centrality and…

Medieval uses of the Bible include imitation, satire, and parody. Chaucer's biblical quotations and allusions, which number more than seven hundred, are used to prove a proposition, to reinforce a statement, to enhance some personage, to criticize a…

Explores the importance of the "new history" for Chaucer criticism and for our idea of medieval literature in general. Examines interpretive models by historians such as Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Natalie Davis, and Carlo Ginzburg.

Chaucer maintained a persistent interest in the complaint genre. Its modest dimensions and unprepossessing claims are part of its appeal, but Chaucer raises large questions about the foundations of cultural and metaphysical truths through the…

"Pryvetee" assumes a spectrum of meanings and a range of functions in the overall scheme of CT. Hanning examines a few of these functions, suggesting that at the center of the poem and Chaucer's art is a mysterious, antithetical, yet symbiotic…

CT is a collection of narratives bound together in a frame with two central features: a pilgrimage and a game. The pilgrimage is the outer frame, while the game is a second, inner framing device--the organizing principle that brings the stories into…

Surveys critical commentary and presents an account of the Friar and FrT. The Friar wants to be deemed a compassionate clergyman, concerned only with correction of sin and perhaps a bit of amusement. But as he moves from his vehement opening tirade…

Reticence shapes the relations between narrator and audience in the Merchant's portrait in GP, where the importance of the unexpressed first surfaces, and in MerT. The rhetorical figure of reticence depends on the reader's cooperation.