Browse Items (16443 total)

Explores ideas of selfhood evident in medieval literature and sixteenth-century printed versions of select romances. Includes discussion of how Chaucer in WBT "utilises the methods and vocabulary at his disposal to generate debate on the 'self'."

Allusions collected since Spurgeon (1908-17; reprinted 1925). Indexes names and titles.

An annotated list of thirty-seven items, intended as an update of Caroline Spurgeon's "Five Hundred Years of Chaucer Criticism and Allusion, 1357-1900."

Tabulates and annotates fifty-seven studies that identify or discuss allusions to Chaucer, presented as a continuation of Caroline Spurgeon's Five Hundred Years of Chaucer Criticism and Allusion (1925). Includes a name and title index for the…

Contemplates the notion that "identification" with a given author is a "frequent, if unacknowledged, component of literary appreciation." Theorizes the notion in Freudian terms and those of reader-response criticism, exploring the processes and…

Assumes that the loathly lady in WBT is a witch, and maintains that she is "stigmatised in the poem to enforce the medieval discourse that appreciates nurture against nature, obedience against revolt, and youth and beauty against old age and…

Orthodox notions of royal prudence and magnificence underlie the idealized figure of Theseus in KnT. Theseus embodies the traits that Richard II was accused of lacking.

Identifies the "broad patterns of ideology in the text," discusses sources and onomastics, and examines the way in which the poetic working out energizes and modifies the ideology.

Throughout the decades, Chaucer critics have argued their own biases in interpreting Chaucer's ideology--seeing Chaucer as a "Christian poet"; as a "poet first and foremost"; as an "atheist"; as a writer who was "politically incorrect." Eschewing…

Clarifies what kind of poems William Wordsworth criticized as "idle and extravagant stories in verse" and examines four English narrative poems before Wordsworth, including WBT. All four turn out to be more or less "idle and extravagant" by…

Chaucer's mode of composition of SNT and CYT owes much to the structure of "Roman de la Rose," in which the theme of contradictions and contraries plays a major role.

Bakhtinian analysis of the discourse of love's labor in classical and medieval love literature, focusing on two traditions: one, rhetorical, playful, and concerned with the labor of courtship; the other, serious, philosophical, and concerned with the…

Considers the relations between BD and fourteenth-century devotional texts, particularly "Cursor mundi," that disparage "fable" as a form of idleness. Rejecting the popular association between consuming fiction and playing idle games, BD reclaims…

Reads Spenser's "Daphnaida" as a "refiguration and response" to BD, modified by Spenser's Protestant outlook. Compares and contrasts the two poems, considering tone, idiom, and faith in the ability of art to console.

Interprets Pier Paolo Pasolini's "I racconti di Canterbury" as a "profound" engagement with CT, analyzing four instances of adaptation that reflect subtle appreciation and understanding of Chaucer's themes and techniques: a latrine scene at the…

Describes two projects that use digital research tools: one using Lexomics to compare passages in "Beowulf" and "Blickling Homily XVII" and another using Lexomics and Voyant to 1) examine verbal clusters in GP to "see if Chaucer wrote differently"…

Explores how Chaucer capitalized on extrinsic and intrinsic connotations in his ape metaphors. Kelly provides backgrounds to the metaphors from other medieval texts and, following Michael Riffaterre, theorizes about how such metaphors can operate in…

A collection of playful JavaScript programs, imitating or responding to well-known literary authors--Hemingway, Shakespeare, Austin, Woolf, Borges, etc.--and including
brief descriptions of each writer's style. The section on Chaucer (pp. 104–11)…

Identifies the "Catholic Humanist rhetorical" ideal that combines "wit and wisdom" in Shakespeare's "As You Like It," examining ten individual scenes. Opens with background to this ideal in European humanism, especially Italian and English, including…

Compares the depictions and analyses of love in TC, Annie Dillard's "The Maytrees" (2007), Thomas Aquinas, and modern psychologies of love, arguing that their underlying concerns with conflicts between passions and choices indicate that sustained…

Reads PrT as satiric, an exposé of the horrors of "institutional ignorance," both Christian and Jewish.

Promotional materials indicate that this essay analyzes a cryptic mystery of the encomium on marriage in MerT (1267ff.), considers previous critical studies, and discloses a new interpretation.

Describes the impact of Boccaccio's "Teseida" on Chaucer's works in Anel, PF, TC, and, especially, KnT, exploring Chaucer's adaptations, the later English adaptations of the story, and critical responses to Chaucer's uses of his source.

After a full review of criticism, Savoia explores Chaucer's use of motifs found in other romances. KnT exploits traditional romance only to transcend it, setting the "romance" of Palamon in the perspective provided by the "tragedy" of Arcite and…

Studies Chaucer's and Boccaccio's dream vision narratives and their references to dreaming in light of the history of the genre, focusing on the secularization of the genre, the rising importance of the poet as dreamer-viator, and aesthetic successes…