Browse Items (16459 total)

Describes the emphasis on short stories in the Danish literary magazine "Cavalcade" and analyzes several of its Danish translations from CT published in the late 1940s, suggesting that the translators--Lis Thorbjørnsen and Jørgen Sonne--were…

Describes and reproduces sample illustrations from four Danish translations of selections from CT: those by Flemming Bergsøe (1943), illustrated by Poul Christensen; by Lis Thorbjørnsen (1946), illustrated by Ib Spang Olsen; by Jørgen Sonne…

Argues that MerT reflects delusive male infantile fantasy, reading January as ego, Placebo as id, Justinus as super-ego, and May as an idealized mother figure. The Merchant's encomnium of marriage and Damain's courtly behavior are extensions of…

Introduces Chaucer's language and its place in English language history, describing his vocabulary (including a list of misleading cognates and obsolete or difficult forms), morphology, grammar, and phonology--all exemplified in the booklet and in…

Describes various features of Thomas Becket's shrine at Canterbury as recorded in Erasmus's satiric "Peregrinatio Religionis Ergo," focusing on its account of Becket's "hair breeches" and suggesting that this relic underlies the Host's…

Hoccleve's three encomia for Chaucer in "Regement of Princes" praise Chaucer's genius but also pose strategies for "poetic usurpation." In applying them to Chaucer, Hoccleve capitalized on the "polyvocality" of the metaphors of father, master, and…

According to Knapp, the "emerging lay bureaucracy at Westminster" is closely aligned with vernacular literary production and a major factor in understanding Ricardian and Lancastrian cultures. As is evident in the career and writings of Hoccleve,…

Knapp surveys trends in academic critical approaches to Chaucer, focusing on interactions and tensions between philological study and interpretive criticism. Summarizes Chaucer's place in the rise of university curricula and explores landmark New…

Explores the "function of faciality" in medieval poetry of Chaucer, Gower, and Hoccleve. Examines Chaucer's portraits of faces in GP, MLT, and TC.

Analyzes the aesthetics of medieval romance in light of the philosophies of G. W. Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, and Hans-Georg Gadamer, exploring and explaining the "pleasurable seriousness" (for modern and medieval audiences) of the "Lais" of Marie de…

The basic narrative unit is limited to nine possible combinations. These combinations can be illustrated by application to the four tales of the Marriage Group in CT. These nine relationships can also be applied to characters, to the relationships…

Influenced by modern critical approaches such as new historicism and cultural studies, Knapp reworks some material published earlier and adds new essays in a volume designed to examine the pilgrims' social contest and the "larger social contest"…

In WBP and WBT, Chaucer dramatizes a powerful reorientation of tradition. In the endings of both, Alison images a reconciliation that awards women justification and a degree of self-definition, without injuring men. The comic genre of CT does not…

Analyzes uses of "glose," "lewed," "estat," and "fre" to clarify the relation of the Parson and ParsT to Lollardy. Lollard diction is more prevalent in the GP description of the Parson and in ParsP than in ParsT, perhaps neutralizing the…

Curry's and Robertson's critical efforts seek to disclose stable, authoritative meaning; they reflect the hermeneutics of Hirsch, concerned with finding valid interpretation. The efforts of Aers and Patterson reflect Gadamer's reconstruction of…

Studies MilT for its "intersecting strands of linguistic coding" and contrasts Robertsonian character typing with Bakhtin's "dialogic imagination," semantic open-endedness. The stock character type of the Miller is "quited" by his tale. Bakhtin's…

Deconstructive readings of CT can reopen the study of historical "particulars," allowing readings from various interpretative communities. Instead of generalized acceptance of "the medieval world view" or of direct historical references suggesting…

Arguments against patristic readings in WBP pose the "problem of controlling biblical interpretation in an age of increasing lay literacy." The Wife speaks of herself as "a text to be glossed."

Discusses four readings of WBP: (1) Alison as a shrewd, aggressive entrepreneur, (2) Alison as a feminist in a society that constantly maligns her, (3) Alison as an archteypical Eve guilty of the sin of pride, and (4) Alison as a sociopath. These…

Interpretations of ClT that rely on the genre exemplum are often subverted through trope irony.

Both the world and the language with which we try to render it intelligible are in constant flux. Tracing changes in the word "thrift" from pre-Chaucerian times through Shakespeare,Knapp stresses the necessity for developing strategies of capturing…

In presenting "werk," "multiplie," and "privitee" as pivotal words and concepts, CYT differs from Jonson's "The Alchemist." Yet both works demonstrate links between material transformation and the early history of capitalism.

The words Corage/Courage, Estat/Estate, Fre/Free, Gloss, Kynde/Kind, Lewid/Lewd, Providence, Queynt/Quaint, Sely/Silly, Thrift, and Virtu/Virtue are time-bound. Like all other language, they are bound to and bounded by the social formation in which…

Knapp historicizes several terms ("ymaginacioun," "fantasye," "resoun," "imaginatyf," "engyn") representing the role of language in national fantasy, exploring how Chaucer uses them throughout his poetry to construct ways of imagining. In CT, PrT…

Knapp examines how Chaucer makes Criseyde beautiful to his audience (then and now) and how critical readings of her character rely on cultural constructs of aesthetic beauty.