Browse Items (16382 total)

Sturges, Robert S.   Jeffrey Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler, eds. Becoming Male in the Middle Ages (New York and London: Garland, 1997), pp. 261-77.
Provides Freudian and Lacanian analysis of two references to veils in the GP sketch of the Pardoner and the Host's threat at the end of PardT. The Pardoner's vernicle signifies his collusion with masculinist equations of penis and word, while his…

Burger, Glenn.   Jeffrey Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler, eds. Becoming Male in the Middle Ages (New York and London: Garland, 1997), pp. 480-99.
MilT reproduces the "sadism" of KnT in its assertion of heteronormativity but simultaneously resists this sadism. In the bedroom-window scene, gender is loosened and "queered," enabling readers to escape from the hegemony of masculinist and…

Helterman, Jeffrey.   Jeffrey Helterman and Jerome Mitchell, eds. Old and Middle English Literature. Dictionary of Literary Biography, no. 146 (Detroit: Gale Research, 1994), pp. 127-44.
Summary description of Chaucer's life and each of his major works, with a bibliography and a chronology of the works accompanied by manuscript and publication information. Treats CT most extensively, focusing on the "quiting principle" of the tales'…

Robertson, Kellie.   Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ed. Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Ethics and Objects (Washington, DC: Oliphaunt, 2012), pp. 91-121.
Distinguishes between modern views of rocks as mere objects and medieval understanding of their "virtues," agency, and exemplary value, raising questions about objects in nature and in art. Assesses the tale of the cock and the rock in Robert…

Ganim, John M.   Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ed. Cultural Diversity in the British Middle Ages: Archipelago, Island, England. The New Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 191-208.
The War of the Maidens, a founding myth of Czech history, may have come to England via Anne of Bohemia and may be part of the "political unconscious" of several of Chaucer's works, particularly his depiction of the Amazons in KnT.

Davis, Kathleen.   Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ed. The Postcolonial Middle Ages (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000), pp. 105-22.
Contemporary orientalism is based on a paradoxical notion of the Middle Ages as both the precursor of modernity and an unchanging alterity. Davis identifies this paradox in Edward Said's "Orientalism" and Diane Sawyer's television documentary,…

Tomasch, Sylvia.   Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ed. The Postcolonial Middle Ages (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000), pp. 243-60.
Because Jews were expelled from England in 1290, their presence in English art and literature is "virtual." Tomasch surveys virtual Jews in the Holkham Bible Picture Book, the Luttrell Psalter, and Chaucer's CT (PrT, the Old Man of PardT, ParsT, and…

Bowers, John M.   Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ed. The Postcolonial Middle Ages (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000), pp. 53-66.
Reads CT as a "decolonizing project" and a "narrative of nationhood" whereby Chaucer resisted Richard II's renewed attachment to French culture and took steps to invent English society. Assesses how several issues in CT reflect English postcolonial…

Jeffrey, David Lyle.   Jeffrey P. Greenman, Timothy Larsen, and Stephen R. Spencer, eds. The Sermon on the Mount Through the Centuries (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos, 2007), pp. 81-107.
Jeffrey explores Chaucer's allusions to the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), arguing that they reflect Chaucer's distrust of glossing and that the Sermon underpins theological themes of CT most evident in Mel and ParsT: peacemaking and obedience.

Shackleton, Robert G., Jr.   JEngL 35 (2007): 30-102.
Employing the "standard" ME dialect of the Home Counties of southeastern England as a baseline, Shackleton applies a number of quantitative variational measures (clustering, distance regressions, variant-area regressions, barrier analysis, and…

Barwell, Graham, and Christopher Moore.   Jenna Ng, ed. Understanding Machinima: Essays on Filmmaking in Virtual Worlds (New York:Bloomsbury, 2013), pp. 207-26.
Explores the goals and accomplishments of an interdisciplinary (English studies and communication) pedagogical experiment in adapting portions of CT to the online game "World of Warcraft," commenting on the processes of animation, mediation, and…

Abdalla, Laila.   Jennifer C. Vaught, ed. Rhetorics of Bodily Disease and Health in Medieval and Early Modern England. Literary and Scientific Cultures of Early Modernity (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 65-84.
Considers PardPT in light of Augustinian semiotic theory. Focus on the body in the Pardoner's materials signals the need to attend to the objects of signs, and the quarrel with the Host "renders impotent" the Pardoner's nominalist "attack on…

Bodden, M. C.   Jennifer C. Vaught, ed., with Lynne Dickson Bruckner. Grief and Gender: 700-1700 (New Yorl: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 51-63.
In FranT and ClT, masculine grief is aligned with courtly ideals of gentility; feminine grief, with courtly suffering. By complicating these associations and disallowing consolation of grief, Chaucer intervenes in the "discursive practices" of the…

Shepherd, Stephen H. A.   Jennifer Fellows, Rosalind Field, Gillian Rogers, and Judith Weiss, eds. Romance Reading on the Book: Essays on Medieval Literature Presented to Maldwyn Mills (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1996), pp. 112-28.
"The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell" recalls WBP and WBT "in a spirit of creative adaptation and emulation," as part of a conscious travesty of this and other sources.

Hole, Jennifer.   Jennifer Hole. Economic Ethics in Late Medieval England, 1300-1500 (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 99-125.
Surveys literary depictions of economic ideals and economic abuses among the aristocracy in ParsT; Form Age; Wynnere and Wastoure"; "Piers Plowman"; and works by Gower, Hoccleve, and Lydgate, focusing on the "portrayal of lords and rulers, both as…

Simpson, James.   Jennifer Jahner and Ingrid Nelson, eds. Gender, Poetry, and the Form of Thought in Later Medieval Literature: Essays in Honor of Elizabeth A. Robertson (Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press, 2022), pp. 201-21.
Considers WBPT as a "not yet" text, i.e., one that "points to a future resolution" without providing it. Rich in "represented reception" on the pilgrimage and in "contested reception" in manuscript glossing, critical response, and adaptation, the…

Trigg, Stephanie.   Jennifer Jahner and Ingrid Nelson, eds. Gender, Poetry, and the Form of Thought in Later Medieval Literature: Essays in Honor of Elizabeth A. Robertson (Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press, 2022), pp. 25-46.
Explicates the shift from Criseyde's bright thoughts of love to cloudy ones in TC, II.764ff., part of a "broader pattern of sun and cloud imagery" in the poem. Uses cognition theory and resonances with Boethius's "Consolatio" to argue that the…

Taylor, Jamie.   Jennifer Jahner and Ingrid Nelson, eds. Gender, Poetry, and the Form of Thought in Later Medieval Literature: Essays in Honor of Elizabeth A. Robertson (Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press, 2022), pp. 3-24.
Articulates similarities and differences between dreaming and insomnia as devices in late medieval dream-vision prologues, following Emmanuel Levinas's suggestion that "the self-alienation experienced by the insomniac can be understood as a release…

Prendergast, Thomas A.   Jennifer Jahner, Emily Steiner, and Elizabeth M. Tyler, eds. Medieval Historical Writing: Britain and Ireland, 500–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 437-49.
Explores relations between medieval written depictions of tragic events in history and "fictional tragedies," commenting on a range of texts, and assessing how, in MkT, "Chaucer seems to suggest . . . that there is a difference between reporting a…

Ripplinger, Michelle.   Jennifer Nuttall and David Watt, ed. Thomas Hoccleve: New Approaches (Cambridge: Brewer, 2022.), pp. 105-23.
Explores Hoccleve's uses of and attitudes toward Christine de Pizan and Chaucer, focusing on Ovidian notions of female readership and how in his"Series" Hoccleve positions Pizan to "speak back to Chaucer" and "asks us to reflect on the Chaucerian…

Myklebust, Nicholas.   Jennifer Nuttall and David Watt, ed. Thomas Hoccleve: New Approaches (Cambridge: Brewer, 2022.), pp. 25-46.
Argues that "because Hoccleve's metre cannot persuasively be reconciled with any known metrical system, it must be allowed its own category." Details Chaucer's metrical "template" and shows how Hoccleve varies it to create his own, although…

Perry, R. D.   Jennifer Nuttall and David Watt, ed. Thomas Hoccleve: New Approaches (Cambridge: Brewer, 2022.), pp. 65-84.
Assesses the "formal organising principle" of Hoccleve's "Series" in light of that of CT (and LGW). Argues that CT is "not just incomplete, but incompleteable" (citing the additivity entailed in CYP), explaining it as Chaucer's response to the…

Atkinson, Laurie.   Jennifer Nuttall and David Watt, ed. Thomas Hoccleve: New Approaches (Cambridge: Brewer, 2022.), pp. 85-102.
Shows how the "framed first-person narrative with which [Hoccleve's] "Regiment" begins is a reconfiguration rather than a straightforward rejection of Chaucer's dream poetry." While both authors use dream-vision conventions to engage previous authors…

Hartwell, Michael J.   Jennifer York Stock, ed. Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, Vol. 283 (Farmington, Mich.: Gale, 2019), pp. 85-304.
Reprints seventeen critical studies of LGW published between 1904 and 2003, several excerpted from larger works. The introduction by Hartwell summarizes the plot of LGW, with little commentary on LGWP, and comments on the plots and sources of the…

Fein, Susanna.   Jenny Adams and Nancy Mason Bradbury, eds. Medieval Women and Their Objects (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017), pp. 15-38.
Argues that the power of WBT, though it is commonly regarded as a lai," comes from an underlying subversion by the use of fabliau, which makes the tale a "hybrid story." The "question of what women most want" has surprising affinities with the…
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