Browse Items (16382 total)

Surveys the impact on medieval poetry of Ovid as a love poet, including comments on Chaucer's use of "Ars amatoria" in WBP, where Ovid's "erotic poetics" are "domesticated" and the reception of his poem reaches its "zenith." Central to "Chaucerian…

Surveys texts by and about Ovid that Chaucer and Gower "might have used," arguing that the influence of Ovid was pervasive, complex, and crucial to the "careers and poetic self-fashioning" of both medieval poets, a model of poetic authority for them.…

Assesses the presence of cosmopolitan thinking in medieval literature, drawing examples from Fulcher of Chartres' "Historia Hierosolymitana," TC, and the medieval Troy story at large. In Chaucer's poem, Criseyde discovers through Diomedes' amorous…

Discusses how editorial glosses and marginalia in extant manuscripts of CT were received and interpreted by medieval readers in the fifteenth century. Includes examination of Latin source glosses of WBPT.

Describes Chaucer's "power and limitations as a stylist," offering examples, and tabulating more extensively examples of oaths and swearing in Chaucer's works, including strong and weak oaths, wishes, and imprecations.

Addresses the status of Chaucer's language in the development of a standard written English, explores grammatical differences between his dialect and "present-day" English, and clarifies the difficulties of understanding the innovativeness of his…

Questions why there was "no great belfry housing a public clock in medieval London," arguing that something similar was raised in the 1350s at the parish church of St. Pancras in Soper Lane. Includes one reference to Chaucer: the cock crow rather…

Gauges the extent and depth of Chaucer's philosophical and theological skepticism in comparison with the views of some of his contemporaries--Wycliff, Langland, Gower, Julian of Norwich, and more. Identifies skeptical attitudes on free will,…

Surveys critics' attempts to correlate Ret with Chaucer's poetic accomplishments, commenting on biographical surmises, textual issues, and thematic concerns such as the putative waning of Chaucer's acuity, clerical influence, the firm linking of Ret…

Comments on thematic similarities between Plato's "Gorgias," Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy," and several of Chaucer's works, observing in TC a particular concern shared by Plato and Boethius: the "futility of earthly existence."

Describes (and reiterates) appreciation of Ricardian culture, exploring ways that Chaucer evokes a strong sense of contemporary London in CT and how, in "The Clerkenwell Tales," Peter Ackroyd evokes a similar sense of reality.

Discusses inquisition and "examination in the ecclesiastical courts" for the ways that they, like confession, help to disclose the development of interiority as an aspect of medieval selfhood, discussing literary works such as "Dives and Pauper,"…

Compares Arveragus's sending of Dorigen to her tryst with Aurelius with the analogous scene in Bocaccio's "Filocolo" and argues that in FranT the husband is concerned with public honor, a reflection of the Franklin's own outlook that Arveragus is a…

Describes a kind of annotation used by eighteenth-century editors that links an edited poet to literary tradition by reference to or quotation from other poets. Focuses on the practice in Speght's 1687 edition of Chaucer; Dryden's Fables (1700); and…

Explores the influence of Eustache Deschamps on the development of non-musical fixed forms in the English lyric tradition, commenting on poems from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson D. 913; the poems of "Ch"; and works by Chaucer and John Gower,…

Traces changes in the putatively fixed form of the balade as used by Eustache Deschamps, John Gower, Chaucer, and others, commenting on variations in number of stanzas, rhyme schemes, the inclusion of envoys, etc. Includes comments on Ven, For, Ros,…

Reads NPT in light of the Nebuchadnezzer account in MkT--the only one of the Monk's tragedies with a "happy ending," the result of a lesson learned. Contrasts MkT as an early work of Chaucer's with NPT as one of his maturity, focusing on the "rival…

Reviews the "extreme implausibility" of attributing the art of individual tales in CT to the pilgrim-narrators, and argues that the "ideas and arguments" of the tales belong to Chaucer. Also reviews the sequential order of the tales as found in the…

Reads the Cook's ulcer as potential leprosy in an effort to show how such signs on the skin act as points of uncertainty that impact the relationships among the pilgrims.

Argues that hue or skin tone "makes skin visible in texts that do not explicitly mention it" and serves to act as an indicator of narrative structure, emotional interactions, and generic conventions of romance in TC.

Demonstrates how the Wife of Bath's resistance to "straight" clerical exegesis is reflected in her skin's rejection of violently enforced "cutaneous legibility" and the forced reading of her "seinte Venus seel" as an innate and legible marker of her…

Uses Judith Butler's transgender theory to read the skin of the Pardoner as an example of cooperative agency resulting in a reconstructed identity, in contrast to the surgically enforced violence of cutting off Virginia's head in PhyT in order to…

Argues that leprosy was seen in the later Middle Ages as a "broad category of skin diseases rooted in sin." Suggests that Robert Henryson's Cresseid, Chaucer's Summoner, and Amiloun were questionable characters whose diseased skins can be viewed as…

Reasons that just as a parchment leaf bears traces of its animal origins and can bear evidence of writing and rewriting, Chaucer writes the Summoner, the Cook, and the Wife of Bath with attention to their skins and the ways in which they communicate…

Adaptation of WBT in archaized modern English prose as a script for presentation as a radio drama, with seven characters (King, Queen, The Young Knight, Old Woman, 1st Woman, 2nd Woman, and Wife of Bath as voice-over narrator). Duration:…