Browse Items (16459 total)

Knapp argues that a historicized, aesthetic appreciation of Chaucer is possible, despite recent tendencies to focus on ideological issues only. The aesthetic theories of Kant and Gadamer help to explain the roles of subjectivity, universality, and…

Uses theoretical perspectives from Raymond Williams, Emmanuel Kant, and Hans-Georg Gadamer to explain and justify a pedagogical approach to CT based on student pursuit of individual "keywords" in the text and students' selection of a single pilgrim…

Applies Kantian aesthetic principles to "display the interanimation of sensible detail with intelligible order" in TC and CT and considers the two poems in light of Hans-Georg Gadamer (on art of the past), Ludwig Wittgenstein (intellectual play), and…

Discusses TC's "moral allegory and fictional realism" using a Kantian aesthetic lens. Focuses on the aesthetics of desire, as well as the rhythm, imagery, and mode of the poem.

Chaucer's treatment of Cassandra in TC illustrates his changes in the tone and import of Boccaccio's "Filostrato." Whereas Boccaccio's portrayal provides interesting psychological study, Chaucer's Cassandra introduces a philosophical context by…

Criseyde's characterization and role in Chaucer's fiction define the way Nature herself looks and functions in the world. Troilus and Pandarus as "priests of Nature" cannot reconcile their image of her with a nature that is "slyding of corage."

Ret, an "authorial form of self-elimination," is formally like irony; it is also a penance, which, also like irony, protects the author from adverse judgment. Thus CT irony can be neatly exchanged for Ret penance. Penance, however, a sacrament and…

Chaucer's use of thou and ye usually follows the standard pattern of his day. Some pronoun switching does appear, sometimes because of rhyme or textual variants but often because Chaucer uses a common formula, quotation, or other habitual lexical…

The body of this dissertation consists of a chronological compendium made up of an individual abstract-like annotation for each significant piece of scholarship (published before 31 December, 1969) which has treated BD during the first 600 years…

Explores the "centrality of the bedchamber to the imaginative worlds" of various texts: TC, Chaucer's dream poems, "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, "The Book of Margery Kempe," Christine de Pizan's "The Book of the City of Ladies," and others. In…

Describes Paul C. Doherty's seven murder mysteries based on CT, exploring them as deeply allusive appropriations rather than adaptations, and theorizing how Chaucer-adept readers of this fan fiction can achieve Lacanian jouissance as well as…

Glosses "almoost a spanne broode" in the GP description of the Prioress (CT 1.155) as "almost four inches high," exploring its ironic implications.

Argues that Chaucer's "poetic powers" are consistently evident throughout CT and that the formal qualities of his poetry are as important to his high reputation as are his wit and humane sensibility. Reads CT sequentially, tale by tale, focusing on…

Assesses the styles and rhetorical devices of FranT. Matching rhetoric to meaning, Chaucer's "modulation of style" in FranT helps to characterize the narrator and the major characters of the Tale and to guide readers' understanding of the variable…

Sees Chaucer's world in the midst of change from feudalism to mercantilism. Threats to society represented by dream visions must yet be integrated into the rational structure. The CT pilgrimage is a Peasant's Revolt in reverse. Knight takes a…

As early as the fifteenth century, two views of CT prevailed: (1) the entire CT is a religious work, and (2) only ClT, PrT, MLT, MkT, ParsT, and SNT are religious. In arguing the first position, Knight addresses difficulties arising from the Hengwrt…

Knight uses variability in early manuscripts of CT to understand historical and socioliterary implications of the work.

In an effort to "historicize" Arthurian legend, Knight discusses the societies that "produced and consumed" various Arthurian works. Does not discuss works by Chaucer.

Emphasizes the oral and dramatic nature of Chaucer's art as illustrated by the Pardoner, against the "socioeconomically based individualism" of the fourteenth century.

Identifies the "broad patterns of ideology in the text," discusses sources and onomastics, and examines the way in which the poetic working out energizes and modifies the ideology.

An explication of NPT, analyzing it within its historical context.

Modern sociological theories of criticism are applied to Chaucer's major works--BD, HF, PF, TC, and CT. In particular Pierre Macherey's ideological analysis is applied to structure and mimesis in Chaucer, and Jacques Lacan's theories on subjectivity…

A Marxist approach to form, structure, and character shows broad dichotomies in Chaucer's art; e.g., between city and country, Gothic and modernist narratives, and worldy and otherworldly philosophies. From the last divergence derives the major…

Explores how Dafydd's "connections, and the lack of them, with Chaucer . . . illuminate the English author." The poets share modal and conceptual similarities, but they differ in style and genre. Chaucer is less a poet of nature than is Dafydd and…

Recurrent concern with lordship in MkT and in the GP sketch of the Monk reveals the Monk's pretense to knightly status, a case of estate transgression.