Browse Items (16470 total)

Assesses Chaucer's relation to Dante as one of "palpable disbelief" in the Italian's claims for authority about the afterlife and God's judgments. In MkT and HF, Chaucer adapts Dante to establish a more worldly and more skeptical sense of poetry.…

Source study of "Ywain and Gawain," "Sir Launfal," and NPT that explores how the process of appropriation reflects social, economic, political, and ideological continuities and transformations.

Surveys medieval and modern understandings of honor as background to discussing the concept in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," Malory's "Le Morte Darthur," and PhyT. Virginius "rightly kills" Virginia "to protect his own honour as well as her…

The remoteness and insularity of England led to the belief that its people were different, both barbarian and angelic. Lavezzo discusses Aelfric, Higden, Chaucer (MLT), and the alliterative "Morte Arthure." Use of the English language contributed to…

From Old English representations of doomsday to medieval romances, "layered narratives" provide audiences with visual judgment. The fair-to-foul transformations of Old English sermons and "Christ III" give way to the foul-to-fair transformations of…

Situates Chaucer's attitudes toward law and legal process in late-medieval thought, discussing statute law, legal procedures of resolution by love, and Italian, Thomistic, post-Glossarian philosophy of law. Tale-telling and pilgrimage represent two…

Reads Ret as the "culminating moment in the progressive disillusionment" of the Canterbury fiction for poet and reader alike. SNT, CYT, and ManT together "systematically confront" medieval notions of truth and the ability of humans to know it,…

Surveys Chaucer's uses of physiognomic detail in descriptions of the Canterbury pilgrims, especially in GP. Chaucer uses these details in various, often ironic ways.

Uses several case studies to assess medieval male clerical behavior and its transgressions. Briefly discusses Nicholas and Absolon of MilT as an illumination of the dilemma of young medieval clerics, caught between their vows of celibacy and their…

The romance knight needs chances to prove himself and achieve fame; he must act. The damsel needs words, often to ask for help. Nickinson treats "Beues of Hamtoun," "The Sowdone of Babylone," Malory's Alysaundir episode, KnT, and FranT, with…

Surveys authorial apologies in literature from the classical period to the late Middle Ages, discussing classical tradition, Christian tradition, medieval Latin tradition, and medieval vernacular literatures, including German, French, Italian,…

Most studies of the vernacular used in religious writing of the late-fourteenth century focus on clerical authors. Clanvowe, a layperson and chamber knight of Richard II, uses the vernacular to discuss Lollardy covertly. Otey examines works of…

Examines the "boundaries between licit and illicit forms of homosocial desire" in communities in late-medieval England. Assesses various texts, including MkPT, FrT, and SumT.

The pagan prayers of Chaucerian characters are granted twice as often as the Christian ones. Pagan deities function as poetic machinery; the Christian God, as source of divine truth. Throughout his oeuvre, the poet treats prayer in accordance with…

With the linguistic turn from mimetic to generative properties of language, the traditional understanding of many aspects of literary and intellectual history has been denied. Jolliffe questions this extreme position in the light of writers such as…

Explores various "developments in the image of writing in the Middle Ages and the different ways in which images empower writing from approximately the sixth through the sixteenth centuries," concentrating on early manuscripts and religious rather…

Studies the medieval whore figure as rebel, outlaw, and heretic through historical and sociological analysis of the Norman Latin poem "Jezebel." Chaucer and Langland consider the whore evil but also emblematic of this world's carnal pleasures.…

Sixteen essays by various authors on Eastern and Western medieval literature and medievalism, plus a bibliography of Manzalaoui's publications. For six essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for From Arabye to Engelond under Alternative Title.

Female characters may reveal the weakness or value of male characters. Crocker examines BD and TC, as well as Spenser's "Faerie Queene" and Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew."

Reprint of 1992 edition.

Meanings of the words "women," "authority," and "language" change throughout Chaucer's works, depending on the complex and shifting relationships of speaker, persona, scribe, and audience, plus pervasive irony. Treats TC, LGW, ClT, FranT, and SNT.

Several citations of Chaucer.

Gossip, its meaning shifting from idle woman to idle talk, was treated as sinful and suspect in much clerical literature, including ParsT. Gossip in HF, WBP, and ShT provided Chaucer not only narrative techniques but also a method of experimentation…

Computer-assisted analysis of "storie" and "tale" in context indicates that Chaucer uses them differently. "Storie" typically appears in relation to the historical, courtly, and clerical, associated with public memory and authority. "Tale" refers to…

Argues that Rudyard Kipling's story "The Wish House" was influenced by WBP. Key words in Chaucer's text ("daunger," "chep") and connotations of the word "ash" (part of the surname of Kipling's leading character, Ashcroft) reveal that Chaucer's work…