Browse Items (16459 total)

WBPT addresses the relationship between vernacular texts and female audiences. Vernacular translations of authoritative texts allow women to enter the discourse of power, creating a new discourse that validates not only the existence of a different…

A new-historicist reading that focuses on the conditions of marriage depicted in WBPT to show how the Wife uses the late-medieval marital system for her own private, emotional advantage. She capitalizes on the social and economic opportunities of…

"The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell" recalls WBP and WBT "in a spirit of creative adaptation and emulation," as part of a conscious travesty of this and other sources.

Surveys medieval attitudes of and about women as background to the GP sketch of the Wife of Bath, WBP, and WBT. Reads the Wife as a conscious manipulator of antifeminist texts, her husbands, and the conventions of romance--all aspects of her…

Aware that their husbands (as chosen by their families or communities) will determine the nature of their lives, women have sought to choose their own husbands, a daring assumption of sovereignty in a patriarchal society. The Wife of Bath,…

While the Wife of Bath's character is proto-feminist, the rape of the maiden and the submission of the woman at the end of WBT point to a dominate patriarchal attitude. By embedding Arthurian myth into WBT and presenting the Wife as a fictional…

Summarizes the history and organization of the four fraternal orders, focusing on the Franciscans and Dominicans. Chaucer's Friar and the friar of SumT are fictional renderings of the antifraternal outlooks of William of St. Amour and Richard…

Friar Hubert practices false-seeming by faking a Francophone lisp, replacing dentals with sibilants in order to increase his social prestige and his seductiveness. Kendrick also explores why Parision French was considered "sweet".

Attests two early-fifteenth-century analogues of SumP and describes several echoes of Wycliffite antifraternal sentiment in SumT: concern with letters of fraternity and trentals (i.e., commissioned masses for the dead), venal preaching, fraternal…

The source for SumT 2253-79 can be found in the medieval notion of the "wheel of the twelve winds," where each wind (depicted in manuscript art as a "spoke") ends in the mouth of a human face. Such a motif was associated not only with atmospheric…

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…

Reads the Clerk's sketch in GP as an idealized depiction of academic life in fourteenth-century Oxford, summarizing typical activities and outlooks.

Since the fourteenth century can be seen as a distant mirror of postmodern culture, "Walter's abuse and Griselda's passive resignation" merit study in the light of twentieth-century psychological insights.

A previously unknown Spanish translation of MerT derives not from Chaucer's original but from the English translation by Alexander Pope. Castillo provides biography of Canary Islander Graciliano Alfonso Naranjo, who may have been the author of the…

Reads the Merchant's sketch in GP as a depiction of a duplicitous man and assesses January in MerT as a reflection of the Merchant's commercial outlook, which, in turn, reflects Chaucer's experience with the mercantile world of London.

The apparent "magic" of SqT is explicable via medieval understanding of the rational explanation of marvels. Surveying medieval attitudes toward science and technology, DiMarco argues that the gifts of SqT are presented as scientific objects that…

Explores the lexical and cultural meaning of "squire" as background to the GP sketch of the Squire. Chaucer's portrait is an idealized one, counterpointed by the lack of rhetorical skill in SqT.

Although the influence of Boccaccio's "Filocolo" on TC is uncertain, examination of various manuscripts of "Filocolo" suggests that Chaucer uses the love questions of "Filocolo" 4 as a source of FranT. Moreover, translating the culture of Book 4…

Challenges the discussion of Angela M. Lucas and Peter J. Lucas (SAC 15 [1993], no. 215), arguing that the marriage of Dorigen and Arveragus "is a poetic expression of freedom and love brought to life by the power of 'trouthe'," a force so much…

Dorigen's home is in "lower" Brittany around Carnac and the Locmariaquer peninsula, an area replete with menhirs and dolmens. These megalithic pagan structures are the "grisly rokkes blake," and Dorigen's fear of them is both physical and spiritual.

The world view of the Breton Lay, as conceived by Marie de France, changed little before 1400. In FranT, Chaucer expands the genre with increased emphasis on passionate and "egalitarian" love in marriage, troth, and magnanimity, as solution to the…

Aurelius usurps and reinterprets Dorigen's speech. Through such devices, Chaucer subtly makes listeners and readers aware that what may appear to be real, whether concrete or ideological, may be illusion. The Franklin's intent is to assert his…

The word "hoom," appearing numerous times in FranT, changes according to the character with whom it is associated. This is especially true of Dorigen, whose "hoom" reflects her most moral self.

Argues that oral promises were binding in the largely oral, late-medieval culture and considers the contemporary "seriousness" of both Dorigen's marriage vow to Arveragus in FranT and her contradictory promise to Aurelius.

Despite the apparent variablility of the genre in English, six Breton lays demonstrate distinctive characteristics, influenced by the turbulent fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England that produced them. Though they deal with difficult issues of…