Browse Items (16456 total)

Comments on differences and similarities among these characters: the Wife of Bath as depicted in WBP, La Vieille of "Roman de la Rose," and old women who take young lovers in two medieval Japanese narratives.

The Wife is "the female shaman" who creates WBT as an initiation rite into manhood.

Documents the manuscript evidence of the authenticity of six passages in WBP (44a-f, 575-84, 605-08, 609-12, 619-26, 717-20) and surveys justifications for their inclusion in various editions.

The rape victim in WBT quickly vanishes from the text because she is "excommunicated," or denied access to the privileges of the knight who exploits her.

Margery Kempe and Alison of Bath represent a basic conflict: as representatives of the nascent bourgeoisie, they seek to inscribe themselves in a tradition that, since they are women, silences them.

Assesses the Physician as a skillful practitioner and comments on PhyT, audience response to the tale, sources, arrangement of materials, and Chaucer's message.

Compares the roles and functions of Criseyde and the Wife of Bath as two of the most outstanding female characters in Middle English literature.

Explores different aspects of the love felt by Criseyde in light of the emotions expressed in BD. As a pragmatist, Criseyde thinks she will not suffer love's pains. Her feelings lack heroic grandeur.

A ballade by Eustache Deschamps poses a "demande d'amour" similar to that of the Loathly Lady in WBT, wherein a courtier is required to render judgment on a question of love.

Assesses the rape in WBT in light of rape as an "episodic unit" in medieval romance and in light of medieval law.

Compares WBT, Gower's "Tale of Florent," and the "Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell" in light of Bakhtin's theory of carnival.

Associative thinking in WBP may have drawn on the model of Aristotelian psychology and argumentation as understood in Chaucer's day. As a consequence, the Wife of Bath's voice remains more real to a modern audience than does the debate she…

It was commonly assumed in the Middle Ages that the devil carried arrows and shot them at his human prey. That the Friar's "yeoman" bears arrows "brighte and kene" (1.1381) is yet another clue that escapes the stupid summoner.

Through the trope of "groping," SumT reveals a narrative erotics that simultaneously privileges and destabilizes heterosexual orthodoxy.

In light of a passage in a Bibliotheque Nationale Paris manuscript, the sense of the phrase "quid iuris questio" in GP is "The question arises of what is the law (upon these facts)."

The ending of SumT parodies the "division of the winds," a problem for the medieval natural sciences that Chaucer notes in Astr.

A close reading of the Envoy to ClT underscores Chaucer's brilliant ambiguity and makes the assigning of it to a single speaker impossible.

Griselda's assent to Walter's wishes, which goes beyond the patience or concealment that he demands, represents complete identification or unity of will. In the theological terms of Rudolph Otto, her assent is not "moral" but "numinous." The…

Scriptural allusions in ClT challenge the patriarchal views traditionally found in it.

Explores the use of "unsad," "untrewe," and "undiscreet" in ClT, relating these words to their stems--"sad," "trewe," and "discreet"--and to Chaucer's characterization of Griselda.

An investigation of the relationship between negatives and negative expressions, content, and characterization in ClT.

The relationship between Walter and Griselda partially re-enacts the paradigm of a child's ego development.

Griselda and Dorigen embody more coherent subjectivities than do their counterparts in analogous tales, although neither becomes a true agent in the outcome of her plot.

Iconographic imagery in ClT indicates Griselda's exemplary physical, moral, and spiritual beauty.