Browse Items (16456 total)

Discusses dream visions (including HF and "Pearl") and dramas of the period to explore ideas of a "feminized" Christ in the medieval period, ultimately contending that any such feminization is problematic and "no simple affirmation of female bodies…

Explores the correspondences between late-medieval, early modern, and contemporary critical and literary nominalism. For five essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Nominalism and Literary Discourse under Alternative Title.

Demonstrates the fundamental, formal open-endedness of BD, HF, and, especially, PF, arguing that the poems exemplify a kind of "literary nominalism" that obliquely reflects contemporary philosophical discourse. Aligns nominalism with "open literary…

Reexamines the correspondences between literary nominalism and realism as competing paradigms and analyzes critical approaches to the literary debate on universals in late-medieval (especially Chaucerian) and early modern literary studies.

In MLT, Chaucer exploited "contemporary taste for stories of beleaguered and pathetic heroines," simultaneously appropriating conventions from his sources and manipulating them to evoke stronger than usual emotional and intellectual responses.

Through the "Planctas Mariae," Keiser illuminates the pathetic mode that governs MLT, PrT, ClT, and PhyT. Griselda, Custance, and Virginia resemble the Virgin in the "Planctas." The anti-Semitism of PrT is common in the "Planctas," and the tale of…

The explanation for the condition of quire 10 in CT is that the leaves became disarranged after the scribe had completed the first half. The order that resulted from his error was ii-iii-i-iv-v-vi. After this faulty order was corrected, the order…

The arrangement of CT proposed by Henry Bradshaw a century ago solves the problems of geography and the Endlink to MLT which are present in the Ellesmere arrangement. Recent arguments against the Bradshaw shift offer no real evidence to reject it.

The use of the word "glad" (E2412) and its repetition (E2416) makes clear the moral point of the tale: happiness in marriage is possible for men, but only if they follow January's example of ignoring reality.

Characters in ShT use imprecise language such as swearing to obscure the meaning of their actions. The narrator, who uses similar language, and fails to notice the implications of his tale, resembles the pilgrim of uncertain identity in the Endlink…

Late-medieval versions of CYT 8.1428-81 misread and/or misrepresent the text as an authority on alchemy, a reflection of a pervasive admiration of Chaucer as a man of science. Not until Enlightenment debunking of alchemy did scholars recognize these…

Introduces the theory and practice of editing literary works, with contextual materials to help readers understand why and how to edit various kinds of texts and produce various kinds of editions. Includes readings from various theorists and…

A British Library copy of John Urry's Works of Chaucer, shelf-mark 642.m.1, contains Thomas Tyrwhitt's notes. These notes record Tyrwhitt's "progress towards his own edition," including commentary on glosses, source material, and apocrypha.

Assesses factors in Thomas Dunham Whitaker's decision to print Piers Plowman in 1813 in blackletter type, even though Chaucer had been printed in roman type nearly one hundred years earlier (by Urry) and anthologists of medieval poetry such as Joseph…

John Urry's 1721 edition of The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer was marketed to support a capital campaign to augment Christ Church, Oxford. Thoughout the 1720s and 1730s, several members of the college were occupied with book sales. Despite poor…

Demonstrates that "Tudor editions of Chaucer imagined Chaucer himself as a Tudor poet" (109); concludes with three illustrations from Houghton Library copies of STC 5075 and 5077.

Kelen studies the reception of William Langland and "Piers Plowman" from the early modern period to the early twentieth century. She focuses on editions of the work and the works it inspired, efforts to identify Langland and construct his biography,…

Compares and contrasts Immerito's and E. K.'s attitudes toward language and archaism in Edmund Spenser's "Shepheardes Calender," with particular attention to how the "overly generous glossing" of the text presumes a "reader's familiarity with…

Identified by Caxton as "historiographs," Chaucer and Langland write as historians and consider the meaning of writing history. In TC, Chaucer discusses sources and antiquity as marks of authority and hindrances to reading. The English literary…

Identifies in medieval medicine a concern with organs and features of the human body that are "grotesquely" able to speak, and associates the concept with Cecilia's neck in SNT and the clergeon's throat in PrT. Through their depictions of human…

Examines the structure of the medieval ecclesiastical court system and the role of the summoner, or apparitor, within that system. The Summoner and the summoner of FrT, as portraits of "two damned souls," reflect Chaucer's knowledge of the "duties…

A psychoanalytic, Lacanian study of the lover's complaint reveals the fragmented lover as seeking at once wholeness through recognition of his "trouthe" by the lady and union with her. Treats lovers' fantasies and failures in TC, Lydgate, Hoccleve,…

Mel resembles several other late-fourteenth-century retellings of this story as a proper model for wifely imitation. In using the form of the scholastic arts lecture, however, Prudence co-opts a masculine discursive style and its authoritative…

Examines the role of lists, themes of order and disorder, epistemology and poetics, and tensions between household economy and monetized mercantile accretion (chremastistics) in Douglas's "Palice of Honour" as a response to similar concerns in…

Clarifies the late medieval shift from household economics to usurious commerce, and argues that HF, John Lydgate's "Temple of Glass," and Gavin Douglas's "Palice of Honour" depict the "dissolution" of traditional households entailed in this shift.…