Browse Items (16470 total)

In the context of an analysis of a news-hungry medieval culture, one chapter examines Chaucer's suspicion of written documents in MLT.

Examines concern with slander and defamation during Richard II's reign as context for a reading of ManT, contending that ManT reveals Chaucer's skepticism towards the power of language as a method of political control.

Individual entries on topics from "Accused Queen" to "Zither" include brief descriptions and, when appropriate, bibliography. One entry on Chaucer (1.167-73); multiple references to motifs in his works, especially in CT.

Examines Chaucer's use of contemporary oral material and traditions of play in CT, especially by the churls. In part 1, Lindahl examines the "shapes of play and society": community of players, role of the pilgrim, shape of performance, and…

With the Host as a master of revels who cannot coerce the lower orders, CT develops wide audience appeal through the pilgrims as players in a medieval festival atmosphere, where both "gentils" and "churls" participate, often with role reversals and…

Records of medieval pilgrimages and parish guilds indicate that groups like that of CT actually gathered; thus the frame may have been modeled on the contemporary scene rather than a literary source. The pilgrim churls' mutual insults follow a…

As a cultural mirror and cultural battleground, romance seems to blend voices from all ranges of society: secular and sacred, rural and urban, rich and poor. As a festive processional storytelling contest, Chaucer's CT successfully imitates the play…

Folklorists' recent interest in performance tends to neglect the chronological context of storytelling, for which now-maligned type and motif indexes remain useful. A change in pattern usually signals a change in meaning. For example, the ending of…

Despite his bookishness, Chaucer is an oral poet, trained in medieval rhetorical tradition, which is rooted in oratory, and successful in his efforts to render oral narratives in literature.

Summary of Chaucer's life and poetic career, emphasizing his familiarity with a "world of noble and festive pageantry" and the "traditional customs" alluded to in his poetry.

Item not seen. The WorldCat records indicate this is a translation of MilT into Swedish, with illustrations by Baengt Dimming.

In response to Gower's words to Chaucer at the end of "Confessio Amantis" (8.2941-57), Chaucer first revised LGWP and then completely restructured the plan for CT (e.g., taking Mel away from the Man of Law and giving him a "Gower" tale instead).

Chaucer reconceptualized CT in response to a challenge levied in Gower's "Confessio Amantis." Shaping the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner to embody the Seven Deadly Sins, Chaucer responded to Gower's taxonomy in the "Confessio" and, in doing so,…

Chaucer may have intended to end MkT with the account of Zenobia--extracting it from LGW--and thereby to offer her narrative as a remedy for the Monk's "spiritual condition," which develops over the course of CT. Lindeboom compares Chaucer's…

Comments on discussions of Chaucer's Purse that relate the poem to Lancastrian politics, offering further corroboration that Purse is subversive.

Lindeboom discusses how Zenobia in MkT helps to characterize the Monk and his spiritual condition. In Dutch.

Reads NPT as a political commentary, with Chauntecleer and Pertelote as Richard and Anne and the fox as Henry Derby (later Henry IV), one of the appellants. Lindeboom comments on May 3, the dreams as Richard's anxieties, dating and astrological…

Traces the influence of CYPT on the "writings of late medieval alchemical works," focusing on George Ripley's "Compound of Alchemy" and discussing a variety of motifs, from alchemists' attire and associations, to the jargon and dangers of alchemy,…

Assesses literary references and allusions to alchemy as an aspect of the transition from the medieval to the modern age, focusing on works by Chaucer, Bacon, Jonson, Donne, Herbert, Henry Vaughan, Milton, and Samuel Butler, but also considering a…

Analyzes the literary treatment of alchemy from Chaucer's CYT through works by John Donne and Ben Jonson; presents CYT as the foundational text in the "long tradition of alchemical satire."

Surveys the availability of manuscripts of John of Salisbury's "Policraticus" and allusions to this work among theologians, jurists, and political writers of the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries. Comments on uses of the text by various…

Comments on the legacy of Chaucer's humor in English literature, and includes a brief introduction to CT and selections from GP (descriptions of Wife Bath, Miller, Summoner, and Pardoner) in modern English translation (by Nevill Coghill), accompanied…

Alisoun presents a puzzle without a key because she is unreal,created out of an imaginary book derived from real male clerical authorities but eventually destroyed. Alisoun and her self-projection--the hag-bride--represent not women who can answer…

Assesses how select literary works "encode subversive possibilities within orthodox gestures."

Argues that gaps and "narratorial subversions" make Chaucer's works (and much of medieval aesthetic theory) "postmodern," comparing them with the definition of postmodernism by Ihab Hassan.