Browse Items (16443 total)

In sociolinguistic terms, Burnley examines orthography among literary scribes of Chaucer's day to find that spelling was far from standardized.

Illustrates the difficulties editors face in dealing with literary representations of regional or non-standard dialects, citing scribal variations of northern features of RvT before examining at greater length examples of dialects in Shakespeare's…

Presents a sketch of the development of the written trades and the connections among scriveners in the late Middle Ages.

Comments on Chaucer's life and works, focusing on his narrative timing, depth of characterization, and linguistic subtlety as means to express sympathy for human weakness. Includes three glossed passages from CT and two wood engravings by Barry Moser…

Describes Chaucer's life and works in chronological sequence, commenting in detail on events and on literary concerns of all of his major works, exploring most extensively characterization in TC and variety of genre in CT. Includes a bibliography.

Treating a book or a "corpus" of literature as a body encourages a prosthetic approach to texts and to narratives. Henryson's addition to Chaucer's TC in his "Testament of Cresseid" works as a "double prosthesis" in which Henryson seeks to…

Explores a "gendered model of disability" in MerT, where the carnivalesque grotesqueness of May's performed pregnancy replaces January's blindness and impotence as a kind of disability.

Sayers reviews commentary on the Wife of Bath's deafness; suggests that we treat it more literally than metaphorically; and posits that, through the deafened Wife, Chaucer "does not resolve the opposition between experience and authority, but rather…

Reconsiders the periodizations that separate medieval and early modern studies, focusing on "'premodern humanism' as a critical problem" and the "anthropocentric fantasy" of the "nonhuman–human divide." Includes comments on the privileging of…

Offers evidence that the "Chaucerian" astrolabe in the British Museum was constructed in the early fifteenth century, perhaps for Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, and provides "a scenario whereby . . . Chaucer would be exposed to astrolabes with…

Hacking describes cultural assumptions about dreams in Western tradition (biblical, Cartesian, Freudian, etc.), noting especially dreams' presumed separation from "reality" and the complexities of their relationships with narrative. He briefly…

Adduces evidence from various sources to show that the Wife of Bath has characteristics of the archetype of the old bawd, itself rooted in the earlier figure of "sorceress-intermediary" and associated with aging, trade, extravagant dress, and…

Explores Chaucer's "nuanced reworkings" of his source texts in the last twelve stanzas of TC, focusing on his adaptations of Boccaccio's "Filostrato," his "Teseida," and Dante's "Commendia," but also commenting on uses of Virgil, Statius, and…

Influenced by Dante, Chaucer's TC represents the "dramatic interplay" of three kinds of love: "the courtly, the natural, [and] the rational." Chaucer departs from his sources, however, adapting the love of Troilus and Criseyde to an English,…

Details the historical record of Chaucer's Italian connections and surveys the influence of Dante on English poetry from Chaucer to the twentieth century. Likens Dante's influence on English to a love story.

Chaucer's changes to Boccaccio's "Teseida" in KnT introduce a concern with Cathar heresy. Until Theseus's final speech, the plot reflects cosmic dualism (Saturn and Jupiter), determinism, and pervasive sterility and evil. The poem is also touched by…

Explores how deafness is represented in some medieval medical treatises as a social phenomenon, "not an ill in itself"; in Teresa de Cartagena's autobiography as a "deaf gain" rather than "hearing loss"; and in Chaucer's Wife of Bath as a mark of her…

Exploring the meaning of time in medieval English literature, Kawasaki suggests that there are two time dimensions in Chaucer, relating them to Chaucer's doubleness or ambiguity. In Japanese.

Considers the backgrounds and narrative structures of Chaucer's comic tales. Chaucer's fabliaux are less serious than are their sources and analogues, although some of the resemblances are disturbing. In Japanese.

Assesses the importance of Troilus's apotheosis, emphasizing Chaucer's debt to Boethius and considering the poet's uses of juxtaposition and his fusion of classical and medieval ideas.

Edward III achieved his dynastic ambitions through military activity, careful marriages, and apportionment of lands and titles among his children. By 1377, his plans lay in ruins,and Richard II's abrasiveness destroyed Plantagenet harmony.

Documents evidence of women's participation in the uprising of 1381, considering judicial records, chronicles by Henry Knighton and Thomas Walsingham, and poetic depictions by Chaucer and Gower. In the chase scene of NPT, Chaucer depicts women as…

Fizzard considers Chaucer's GP description of the Monk among other satires and accounts of monastic dress, exploring in particular debates about standards of dress among Augustinian monks.

Analyzes the expression "wring one's hands" in TC, HF, MLT, and ClT, and other Middle English romances. Focuses on frequency, associated gestures, and the gender of the person performing the action. Finds that the expression often accompanies other…

Identifies parallels between various aspects of PardPT and Master Odo of Cheriton's sermons, and includes passage on pardoners from Cheriton's "Fables." Suggests that these intertextualities, both general and specific, indicate that it is "possible,…