Browse Items (16470 total)

Argues that the Hundred Years' War has been overemphasized as a moment in which war, identity, and language coalesced to form distinct English and French nations and vernaculars. Portrayals of France in the works of Chaucer and others are not…

Destabilizes the notion of a progression of "identifiable movements" in English vernacular writing culminating in Chaucer in the fourteenth century, arguing that "The Owl and the Nightingale" (c. 1200) should be taught as an early foundational…

Plenary lecture positions Chaucer as important to sixteenth-century writers for his incorporation of the Latin rhetorical tradition--particularly the concepts of decorum and Augustine's three levels of style--into English, even as he does so with…

Compares the attitudes toward fame and poetic fame in HF and in Skelton's The Garlande of Laurell, arguing that Chaucer's willingness to accept the Boethian transience of fame contrasts a greater desire for certainty in Skelton.

Examines the apocalyptic genre of English short-verse prophecies, which were attributed to authorities such as Merlin, Bede, and Chaucer, who existed safely in the past but often also on the margins of political and religious orthodoxy. Popular from…

Argues that, despite critics' dismissal of the idea, a clandestine marriage is as likely in Boccaccio's "Il Filostrato" as in TC.

Coleman argues that Philippa of Lancaster, oldest legitimate daughter of John of Gaunt and queen of Portugal from 1387, sponsored the Portuguese and Castilian translations of Gower's "Confessio" Amantis. Philippa may also have been responsible for an…

Considers the importance of Spain in Chaucer's life, in the politics of his age, and in his literary allusions, arguing that Chaucer could read Spanish and that his familiarity with the tale collections of Petrus Alfonsi and Don Juan Manuel "would…

Describes female sexual stereotyping in Chaucer's depictions of the Wife of Bath, Griselda (ClT), Custance (MLT), Dorigen (FranT), and the Prioress (GP).

Increased concern with female characters in KnT distinguishes it from traditional epics, and its presentation of women and gender relationships embodies "evolutionary changes" in the romance genre. Nonetheless, Emily is imprisoned at the end "in yet…

Compares narrative aspects of CT and Juan Ruiz's "Libro de buen amor," especially their uses of irony and an author-narrator; also explores relations between the Prioress and Ruiz's Dona Garoca.

Correale traces allusions to Lamentations 1.12 in Marian "planctus" tradition, arguing that appeals for sympathy linked to Mary underlie Constance's prayer to the Virgin in MLT.

Shakespeare's alterations of KnT in A Midsummer Night's Dream and (with John Fletcher) in Two Noble Kinsman resulted from the exigencies of the stage and produced works of a new tenor and thematic emphasis.

Assesses Nicholas's manipulation of language and signs in MilT as Chaucer's embedded analysis of typological or analogical thinking. The references to mystery plays in MilT counterpoint the "poetics of a trickster clerk" whose manipulations embody a…

Considers the lack of extensive glosses and commentaries on late Middle English literature, including Chaucer, arguing that in England, unlike on the Continent, the concern with "translatio studii" (transferring the authority of the ancients to the…

Critiques "dramatic" or Kittredgean readings of the prologues in CT, especially those "newly oiled by Lacan," and considers the prologues in light of the French dit--loosely defined as "speech imitated in clerkly writing" or the "illusion of speech…

Although the manuscript is a typical instance of "compilatio" and unification (e.g., punctuation of ParsT), the virtues portrayed to illustrate ParsT do not belong to a typical iconographic program. After identifying the three virtues with two…

Recognizing parallels between "The Wife of Bath and Her Tale" and contemporary female practice, Dryden intensified the elements of faery and magic in his version of the "Tale." In addition, he greatly reduced the lively presence of the Wife,…

Surveys the reception of Chaucer reflected in translations by Dryden, Samuel Johnson, Pope, and Wordsworth, viewing it as the beginning of modern criticism, of the modern idea of a national literature, of modern textual criticism, and of modern…

Analyses Chaucer's polysemous uses of quite(n) in CT in light of late fourteenth-century concerns with contracts and debts, disclosing various tensions among the tellers' origins, professions, and ranks.

Considers BD as a partition between the mythical and fictional worlds and reality, as a textual space of transition where poetic experience and real life are intertwined.

Though posed as a continuation of CT, the Prologue to the Tale of Beryn emphasizes a return from Canterbury to London, from the sacred to the profane. Sentence and solaas are reduced to the merely "glad and merry."

Contrasts Chaucer's Wife of Bath with Belle, who is constructed from the tradition of masculine discourse on feminine attractiveness.

Examines the portrayal of friendship in works by Chaucer, Lydgate, and Petrus Alfonsi.

Explores the character of the Wife of Bath, focusing on complementary dualities, particularly moral instruction and enjoyment.