Browse Items (16456 total)

The historical present and perfect tenses in KnT could be said to function mainly to express vividness, which is closely related to the nature of orally delivered poetry.

Identifies details of the characterization of the Canon and his Yeoman in CYP that derive from alchemical practice and materials, including the Canon's "distillation" (perspiration) and "mercurial" personality and his Yeoman's transformation and…

Although lacking the modern consciousness of irony, the Middle Ages was ironic both in its Christian view of the world and in its literary expression. Examines the "concordantia oppositorum" in art and literature. "The constant possibility of…

Following a methodology outlined in Gabriel Naud's seventeenth-century history of magic, the essay examines early modern historical accounts of magic to understand how magic came to be defined and debated. The title derives from WBT.

Schultz critiques uses of "heterosexual" as a term and as an ahistorical concept in queer studies of medieval literature. Chaucerian critics (and others) use the term in ways that "distort the very object" of their studies, "thwart" history, and…

Describes the idea of the "servant-become-warrior" in the Japanese "Tale of Heike" and in KnT, commenting on the etymological roots of "samurai" and "knight" and exploring how concepts of determinism, service, and Foucauldian disciplinary power…

Chaucer's "open-endedness" and "lack of an ending" relate to the fact that he was writing in a "time of crisis" (the Black Death, the corruption of the church). He sought to confront conditions of his time through pluralism, and his lack of closure…

Mythological lovers alluded to in TC were associated in medieval letters with "amor stultus," foolish love. Allusions to Oenone, Tereus and Procne, Orpheus and Eurydice, and Myrrha help characterize the love of Troilus and Criseyde as foolish,…

Chaucer's portrayal of the Monk and of the monk in ShT is complex and sympathetic. Contemporary expectations about monks are clear in the Host's reactions to the Monk. Daun John fits the stereotype but may be motivated by a desire to chastise…

Assesses "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell" with recurrent glances at its analogues, Gower's "Tale of Florent" and Chaucer's WBT. The life question in the "Wedding" and in WBT "speak directly to a perennial feminine plight" (69), and in…

Explores Chaucer's depictions of physicians, focusing on how they exemplify the tension between "medici corporals" (bodily medicine) and "spirituals" (spiritual medicine). None of Chaucer's physicians exhibit an ideal balance; Chaucer explores a…

Review article.

Draws upon theories of Aristotle, Bradwardine, Aquinas, and the scholastics on action ("operatio") to explain the complexities of the Wife's character and the nobility of the hag's lecture--through the Wife's competence in "scholastic give-and-take."

The diptych (1398-99), an English work that once belonged to Richard II, shows "God, the Blessed Virgin, and Richard's ancestors" conferring upon him "absolute, unlimited sovereignty." As the king's altarpiece, it "proclaimed the religious mystery…

A wide variety of interpretations and levels of meaning make MilT both oblique and clear. Chaucer yokes contradictory elements and obscures an underlying morality "to catch off guard his sophisticated readers--the 'clerical and courtly elite'--who…

Behind the grotesque circumstances of PhyT, Chaucer presents an ironic view of natural law: Nature gloats as she forms Virginia to glorify God in purity; yet, the Physician mocks the sheltering of perfection since natural law will soon corrupt her.

In Chaucer and other fourteenth-century writers, dreams often prompt the dreamers to try to assert intellectual control over their mysterious experience by classifying the possible causes or truth values of dreams. Earlier classifications of this…

Suggests that Daun John and aspects of ShT may have been inspired by a popular legend (perhaps oral) of Don Juan.

Chaucer's version of the Ceyx-Alcyone story differs from its predecessors in ways that emphasize how love can transcend death, helping to make the consolation of the poem particularly Christian.

Contrasts aspects of NPT with "Roman de Renart" Branch IIIa to show that Chaucer makes his rooster more masculine and his hen more feminine than in the source. Includes a translation of Branch IIIa, 4175-4315.

Identifies similarities and differences between marginal illustrations in the Smithfield Decretals (British Museum Royal MS. 10 E.iv) and narrative motifs in versions of the "Roman de Renart," commenting briefly on the presence of the distaff in the…

Examines tapestries dealing with the story of Troy from the fourteenth century onward.

Discusses biblical kings represented in the "camera depicta" of the Westminster Chamber, also treated in several literary works on kingship, including MkT and a short passage in ParsT. The Chamber's murals proclaim the Plantagenet kings to be "ideal…

In his Kelmscott Chaucer, Morris presents Chaucer as a proponent of anti-capitalist socialism, consistent with Morris's own arts and crafts movement. The essay comments on the heteroglot voices of the Canterbury pilgrims and the Kelmscott…

Chaucer's strenuous effort to protect Criseyde from harsh criticism against her is an indication that he is a man with interests in humanity in the dawn of the Renaissance rather than a medieval writer.