Browse Items (16391 total)

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…

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…

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…

Discusses Chaucer's thematic thread of accessibility of legal rights to women in FranT and PhyT. Dorigen, in FranT, and Virginia, in PhyT, are women trapped as objects of medieval law, or as properties whose control or outright ownership is the…

Considers BD and the metaphor of chess, particularly the way in which the rules of the game are remediated in the action of the poem. Looks at gender-crossing in relation to BD, but transcends previous arguments focusing on the chess allegory.…

Discusses SNT as Chaucer's only hagiographical work to evaluate the medieval perception of art. Contrasts the medieval devotion to earthly relics in relation to St. Cecilia's desire to shed the physical and enter the spiritual, while paralleling her…

Considers the exchange of objects in the Zenobia/Cenobia story in MkT not as a punitive measure for pushing back on gender constructs or a validation of the Monk's blatant misogyny, but rather as a moment of empowerment.

Focuses on materiality and objects in PrT, specifically the corpse, the antiphon, and the "greyn," and their "transcendence of the miraculous object." Claims that these objects illustrate Carolyn Bynum's notion of material objects involved in…

Examines works that focus on Queen Anne by Clanvowe, Maidstone, and Chaucer (LGW and PF). Claims that these works function "chronologically, thematically, and politically" as a means to articulate the female power and agency of Anne, giving her a…

For Chaucer and other medieval writers, "the figure of the idol is a means of focusing on problematic aspects of imaginative textuality and its contexts" (44). The sculptures in HF and Lollius in TC are partially represented or broken figures of…

Describes the "new phase" in English publishing and book production that took place in the "early years" of the fifteenth century--particularly the large increase in the number of books of vernacular poetry, including Chaucer's poetry. Summarizes…

BD discursively performs the act of burial. Blanche's death is comparable to Freud's "primal scene"; her "whiteness" traces primordial obliteration; as in Lacan, narrative arises in loss.

The stereotypes depicted in Cecilia, the Wife of Bath, and Griselda reflect the continuing conflict between women who want to escape submissive roles and those who accommodate abusive relationships. Cornelius encourages classroom discussion of SNT,…

Use of the Robinson second edition based on the Ellesmere MS has encouraged the neglect of many textual problems in critical studies concerning "unity" or "idea" of CT; Manly and Rickert's monumental edition is virtually ignored. Hengwrt is a vastly…

Argues that Chaucer amplifies Boccaccio's "Filostrato" in order "to expand our awareness of both the values and limitations . . . of idealized human love," using brief and long expansions as well as lengthy additions. Complexly presented, the love in…

Explicates a "series of four scenes" in TC (2.596-931) that enable readers to "know what it feels like to 'be' Criseyde," establishing a fundamental empathy with her by, unusual in the age, seeing "into the mind of a woman." Examines the passage as a…

Comments on the "impediments" to determining the order of CT with certainly, focusing on manuscript evidence, especially the problems evident in MLE and the "Rochester-Sittingbourne contradiction" in the Ellesmere order of the Tales. Suggests…

Contends that MilT differs from both KnT and RvT in its presentation of a world that lacks rational order or poetic justice. Alison escapes punishment and John is punished unfairly so that behind the jollity and illusion of order in the MilT lies…

Surveys the suggestiveness of first names in Middle English poetry, exploring connotations, denotations, name-play, and the implications of form in the uses of such names. Includes comments on names used by Chaucer, especially in CT.

Surveys criticism that, in various ways, treats Chaucer as a love poet, commenting on the strengths and weaknesses of individual approaches.

Summarizes the four papers included in this volume, with emphasis on how well they cohere.

Treats parody as a technique that expresses the inadequacies of a given topic but also evokes its ideals, exemplifying how Chaucer achieves this dual perspective in BD, PF, TC, and Part 1 of CT.

Restricts the "marriage group" to the four components originally proposed by George Lyman Kittredge (WBPT, ClT, MerT, FranT), disclosing the intricacies of their interconnections and considering in turn their various attitudes toward sex and mastery…

Surveys the uses of the biblical Song of Songs in medieval secular love poetry as background to exploring Chaucer's uses of it in BD and TC, and his comic adaptations of it in MerT and MilT.

Comments on the varieties of love in Chaucer's poetry (Christian, philosophic, courtly, and allegorical) and focuses on "ordinary" love in TC, where the personal experience of love is "not merely displayed" but probed with thoughtfulness, honesty,…