Browse Items (16459 total)

PF represents an "oedipal moment"--a psychological suspension between the "male-dominated civilization of Africanus ('culture,' in a word)" and the "female-dominated love-garden of Nature and Venus ('nature')." The narrator stands "on the brink of…

Analyzes the "experiential vision of the past" depicted in Powell and Pressburger's movie "A Canterbury Tale," exploring the "spectral inspiration" of Chaucer, the film's propaganda value, its "metacinematic" ironies, and its "perversions" of the…

Interprets Pier Paolo Pasolini's "I racconti di Canterbury" as a "profound" engagement with CT, analyzing four instances of adaptation that reflect subtle appreciation and understanding of Chaucer's themes and techniques: a latrine scene at the…

Assesses Hyapatia Lee's "Ribald Tales of Canterbury" as "quasi-medieval erotica" and a conventional example of pornography from the "golden age" of porn films (1970s and early 1980s). Then discusses evidence from the film and from an autobiography…

Explores the "unexpected points of contact between" Brian Helgeland's "A Knight's Tale" and Chaucer's poetry, discussing ways that the film and KnT focus on tilting arenas and order, their affinities with pastiche, their concern with the power of the…

Observes the lack of "narratorial interactivity" (teller/tale relations) in the BBC adaptations of CT and explores several other "markedly un-Chaucerian" aspects of the television version of MilT, remarking that the series "does little to promote"…

Argues that the concern with reading and liberation in the BBC television version of KnT is "reflexive," mirroring the goals of the six-part series. The series' goal of "freeing" readers from "academic Chaucer" is paralleled by efforts to liberate…

Coins the term "updaptation" to describe adaptations that shift temporalities from past to present, using the term to explore relations between ShT and the BBC television version, the "Sea Captain's Tale." Focuses on the episode's use of film noir…

Shows that the BBC television adaptation of PardPT concentrates more on sexual predation than on death, and argues that this eliminates both the sexual and the contextual queerness of Chaucer's original, which requires of its audience "rigorously…

Views the BBC television version of MLT as an exploration of the simultaneities of past, present, and future, interrelated with motifs of amnesia, immigration, political struggle, religious warfare, and the "correlation of spiritual and sexual…

Explores the "ghostly presence" of WBPT in the first three episodes of the television show "Mad Men," updating and remediating the "parody of Western misogynist tropes" in WBP, refashioning from WBT the question of what women want, and reframing…

Argues that Shakespeare's works have more often been adapted to the screen than Chaucer's works because the latter have widely been considered to be "guarded by experts." Comments on the Troilus frontispiece, Jonathan Myerson's animated adaptation of…

Suggests that modernity's insistence on a repressive break with the past helps to explain the paucity of screen adaptations of Chaucer's works, commenting on similarities between Chaucer's desert in HF and the "desert of the [R]eal" of Jean…

Describes the limited presence of Chaucer in the early American films, commenting on a Motion Picture Academy educational promotion and a "distorted" version of PardT, "On Borrowed Time" (1939). Offers five reasons for this scarcity:…

Recounts efforts to find "film elements" (recorded vestiges) of "The Deadly Riddle," a 1956 television version of WBT, produced by Roy Huggins for "Warner Brothers Presents," starring Natalie Wood and Jacques Sernas. Only paratextual material…

Posits that Chaucer's box-office appeal is limited in the U.S. by his "relatively low cultural profile," his association with "British linguistic and literary nationalism," and the "paradoxical stigma" of being both too high-brow and too bawdy.…

Explores similarities between ambiguity and rhetorical invention in rhetorical tradition from Plato to the twenty-first century. Then discusses three examples of "conscious exploitation of the potential of ambiguity": "Sir Gawain and the Green…

Through Harry Bailly in CT, Chaucer explores the literary tastes of his new audience. Although the Host's interpretations of Chaucer's tales are usually wrong-headed, Chaucer uses the Host to suggest appropriate audience reactions to various…

Compares paired samples of Langland's and Chaucer's verse to argue that Langland's are superior in both sound and sense.

Chaucer and Langland are both "great religious writers," although Langland is more deeply engaged in "who and what God is." Both writers are poets of religious experience: Chaucer explores pathos, and Langland confronts the "central beliefs of…

Baker and Morrison read MerT as a "sustained response" to Piers Plowman B.9. Both works are concerned with marriage, gender, and the pursuits of appetite. Whereas MerT poses a woman who must live expediently, Piers Plowman absorbs gender into…

Examines adaptations of conventional depictions of change in literary characters--in works by Chrétien de Troyes, Marie de France, and Benoît de Sainte-Maure. Contrasts the change in Benoît's Briseida with that in Chaucer's Criseyde, focusing…

The Ellesmere miniatures are evidence of the process of text production--the shaping and preparation of the manuscript for aristocratic viewing--and a visual guide to the reading process. The illustrations foster the aristocracy's sense of…

Codicological analysis of the "Taylor Gower," produced by scribe D, who also produced two manuscripts of CT. This scribe and his "shadow" scribe (Scribe Delta) indicate possible entrepreneurial activity among English vernacular copyists.

Hilmo explores the iconography of representations of the Prioress, the Second Nun, and their Tales, commenting on the Ellesmere illustrations of the tellers, the Vernon manuscript depiction of PrT, two manuscript depictions of Saint Cecilia, and the…