Browse Items (16456 total)

Discussion of the Alcestis account in Morris's 'Earthly Paradise' and in Ted Hughes's adaptation of Euripedes's 'Alcestis,' including comments on the influence of Chaucer's LGWP on Morris.

Compares the aesthetic experiences of confronting two illustrated editions of Chaucer as reproduced in facsimile, arguing that the Eric Gill edition of CT provides greater pleasure to a modern user than does William Morris' edition of Chaucer.

FranT, although a declared romance, has been judged almost universally by real-life standards of conduct in marriage. Two real-life women of Chaucer's period, Margaret Paston and Christine de Pizan, provide a standard of conduct in their own…

The Wife of Bath has served as an example of a medieval feminist. However, it would be more accurate to describe her as an androgyne--a person possessing both male and female characteristics. While it can be argued that she has liberated herself…

Mandeville's "Travels," Chaucer's CT, and Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" together established the "narrative strategies and structural patterns" of English travel literature, impelling the formation of the "space imagination, subject consciousness,…

Critical attempts to find structural cohesion or unity in CTare misguided. Instead of reading over or past the interruptions, omissions, and inconsistencies of the poem, we ought to recognize that, in many ways, its absences are central to its…

Assesses critical responses to the Host's verbal assault on the Pardoner at the end of PardT, identifying the common assumption that the Host fears the Pardoner's sexuality. Such readings are complicitous in the "abjection" of the Pardoner and…

Explores the argument that the lack of Chaucerian presentation miniatures suggests that Chaucer did not write for wealthy patrons. Identifies the first presentation miniature in an English-language manuscript as the 1409 incipit image in John…

Internal evidence in Chaucer's works indicates that he expected his works to be read aloud--both by himself and to an immediate, first audience and by prelectors to later audiences. Chaucer's references to the reception of his work, his references…

Introductory description of CT, discussed in light of Chaucer's life and several literary concerns: estates satire, the role of the Church and pilgrimage, the "battle of the sexes," and sources. Includes plot summaries of MilT, WBPT, FranT, and NPT.

Examines outdoor space in BD and PF in light of research on medieval constructed gardens, especially the pleasure garden of Elizabeth de Burgh at Clare Castle, Suffolk.

Considers several factors (apocope, compounding, etymology, and metrical environment) in the presence or absence of final "-e" in Gower's and Chaucer's monosyllabic adjectives, clarifying Gower's relative regularity by identifying the paucity of…

Conducts a "systematic analysis of the synchronic spatio-temporal systems" in Astr, taking "deixis into consideration," defining terms, and analyzing the interactions of "pronouns, demonstratives, adverbs, tense forms, and modals," along with…

Surveys medieval beliefs and learning about magic and explores the narrative function and resonance of magic and the supernatural in Chaucer's writing. Also considers relations to natural philosophy or "science" and the shift from medieval to…

Conan Doyle's portrayals of knights from the Hundred Years' War in "The White Company" (1891) and "Sir Nigel" (1906) embody the same contradictions and ambiguities found in Chaucer's depiction of a fourteenth-century knight in CT.

Discusses the uses and functions of classical myth in Chaucer's works from a double perspective: Chaucer's knowledge of the different stories and his creative adaptations of this material.

Discusses linguistic pragmatics to disclose parallels between WBPT and PardPT, focusing on the relationship between the characters' uses of speech and the two works.

Evaluates the effects of the transition from orality to literacy in CT. Chaucer's oral mode of presentation conditions his manipulation of that tradition to the extent that it compels his audience to believe that he has read what, in fact, comes from…

Surveys themes and plots in HF, comments on its sources, and discusses its "narrator-character."

Comments on Chaucer's description of Pedro I of Spain in MkT, and on similarities between CT and de Ayala's "Rimado."

Blends a "historicist" approach that sees Mel as topical to the later 1380s with "formalist" emphasis on its discontinuities and contradictions. Concludes that "in the context of the Appellants' struggles with Richard II,...the deconstruction of the…

One of the best and earliest observations of the basic distortion of history with regard to women and their roles is made by the Wife of Bath (III, 688-96). Christine de Pisan makes a comparable but more elaborate statement of the mistreatment of…

Clarifies why "The Flower and the Leaf," "The Assembly of Ladies," "La Belle Dame sans Mercy" and "The Isle of Ladies" are described as "Chaucerian," noting their attribution to Chaucer in manuscripts and early printed editions, describing their…

Analyzes the form and presentation of John Lydgate''s "Fifteen Joys and Sorrows of Mary," reading it as a bridge between the experiences of poetry and devotion, i.e., for the ways it "relishes the devotional and imaginative possibilities offered by…

Argues that three lyric moments in Book II of TC (Antigone's song, the lay of the nightingale, and the dream of the eagle) "distil the complexity of Criseyde's
inner deliberations," show "how Criseyde's choice to love is inflected by the condition…