Browse Items (16456 total)

Treats the theme of homosexual advances and rejection in the conclusion of PardT.

Through courtly love, Boethian philosophy, and Godly intervention, Oedipal fantasies of Freud are played out in TC.

Characters within TC, like readers without, attempt to "penetrate" and "control" its various "texts." Using a deconstructive approach, Johnson treats images of containment in Chaucer's narrative.

Folklorists' recent interest in performance tends to neglect the chronological context of storytelling, for which now-maligned type and motif indexes remain useful. A change in pattern usually signals a change in meaning. For example, the ending of…

Reconsiders the structure and usage of figurative negation in Chaucer treated by Hein (1983), in relation to context and rhyme and in comparison with "Roman de la Rose." Figurative negation is related to rhyme.

Examines "politeness strategies" (ye/thou) and emotional language in light of genre expectations and characterization. In MilT, MerT, and ShT, wives use various linguistic strategies to manipulate their husbands and others, but the linguistic…

Anatomizes numerous examples of insults in English, from Unferth's challenge of Beowulf to "flaming" in e-mail communication, including examples from SNT, exchanges between the Host and the Cook, and exchanges between the Host and the Pardoner in CT.…

As speech acts, threats are usually both conditional and commisive; i.e., they depend on an inferred promise, and they commit the speaker to some future course of action. Threats in Chaucer's works are usually modulated by the additional element of…

Line-by-line, phrase-by-phrase commentary on the grammar and lexicon of CkPT, presented as a series of notes to a reprinting of the text from F. N. Robinson's 1957 edition.

Tallies and assesses Chaucer's uses of comparative constructions using as in CT (e.g., "as . . . as," "as . . . as is a . . ."), including their functions as set phrases.

Provides an expansive list of Indo-European cognates for "mochel," with a sematic core of "'approximation' in time or space."

Provides background to franklins in medieval England and uses Stephen Greenblatt's notion of "self-fashioning" to assess the characterization of the Franklin in GP, in his words to the Squire (Sq-FranL), and in FranT as an "embodiment of the 'new…

Sauer describes the "inadequacy of lesbian criticism in today's Medieval Literary Studies" and suggests some opportunities for developing such studies, including opportunities in Chaucer studies.

Snyder explores how, despite initial impressions to the contrary, women can be said to have a central function in KnT, even though no woman in the Tale serves as an agent of change.

Personal reflections on having multiple sclerosis during the COVID-19 pandemic, describing changes that these conditions brought to (re)reading BD.

This Bakhtinian discussion of KnT argues that the "flaws" perceived by earlier critics result from misguided efforts at finding homogeneity in the poem. As a product of a complex literary culture, KnT reflects the culture's "heteroglossia" and…

Clarifies pressures exerted by literary translation theories of the late twentieth century on Boje's translation of CT, focusing on the taboo against blasphemy in the target language, Afrikaans, and Chaucer's use of religious oaths.

Chaucer's portrait of the Monk is consistent throughout CT. In narrating MkT, the Monk distorts biblical passages such as the Samson exemplum, showing himself remiss in biblical studies just as the GP Monk is lax in other clerical duties.

Clarifies the life and tradition of St. Omobono as a "merchant saint" and "patron of businesspeople and entrepreneurs," incorporating discussion of "early literary representation of the merchant character in Chaucer and Shakespeare." Includes…

The belief that all humanity will attain salvation occurs with surprising frequency in Middle English writings. Though influenced by Latin theology, the sentiment was generated primarily by English and Anglo-Norman vernacular culture. PF shows the…

The logic of sacrifice (in particular, the sacrifice of the subject, Arcite) that permeates KnT produces a "jouissance," which the discourse of charity attempts to disguise.

Argues that Griselda of ClT is not a type of Christ, because not all depictions of human suffering imitate Christ's passion. Texts by authors from Aquinas to Wycliffe, Arundel,and William Thorpe indicate that passive suffering is one of many…

Both CYPT and the "Book of Margery Kempe" raise questions about community and selfhood. In each, an individual criticizes his or her community to the members of a different, markedly less local community. The two texts suggest the precariousness of…

Literary and historical periodization conventionally depends on viewing the lyrics of Wyatt and Surrey (for example) as distinctive and innovative, expressing a characteristically "Renaissance" divided self that is isolated from political and social…

Cultural and institutional practice has frequently estimated the status of Gower's poetry and the value of his manuscripts, not through assessment of his own achievements, but through his historical and literary proximity to Chaucer.