Browse Items (16470 total)

In giving the planetary gods a role in the narrative dynamics of "The Testament of Cresseid," Henryson is following in the steps of Chaucer in KnT, Mars, and TC. Mann examines "both the resemblances and the differences between the two poets in their…

Chaucer's dialogue, poetic "stage directions," and expansion of the wooing scene make his TC more "Shakespearean," or dramatic, than Shakespeare's treatment of the story. Chaucer's heroine is brilliantly drawn to show her inner movement from true…

Chaucer painstakingly "alerts" his sources in Boethius and Boccaccio to "emphasize the role of chance in the events of the narrative." Mann explores relationships among chance, "necessitee," and free will in TC and KnT.

Both "Pearl" and ClT use comparatives for contrasts with a notion of satisfaction signified by the words "enough" and "suffisaunce." The set of related words in ClT, including "sadness," "suffraunce," "outrely," and other words of degree and…

Recent critics of Chaucer--Terry Jones, David Aers, and others--are conventional in their desire to moralize medieval literature. The trend of contemporary criticism of FranT, TC, and KnT, as examples, is to isolate from the story tableaux serving…

Chaucer's addition of Troilus' swoon allows reestablishment of "obeisaunce" critical to Criseyde's loving him, and threatened by Pandarus' story of his jealousy and his own inability to refute or continue it. Mutual apologies suggest mutual…

Examines how a twentieth-century atheist can read and respond to Chaucer, suggesting that a form of "dialogism" can mediate between the present and the past and can enable us to recognize that Chaucer is essentially more humanistic than, for example,…

Demonstrates that "the parent-child relation is one of the central motifs" of CT. Focusses on MkT, MLT, PrT, PhyT, and ClT to argue that Chaucer explores not only the power relations between parent and child but those parallel relations as well…

Recent editors have privileged the Hengwrt (Hg) manuscript by attributing metrical and morphosyntactic features of Ellesmere (El) to editorial intervention rather than to scribal error. Mann traces the development of the "myth of the El editor,"…

Mann explores Nicholas's verbal manipulation of John in MilT, the portrait of Alison, and the body language of the kiss scene (and some analogous fabliaux), arguing that language, imagination, and physical reality are in many ways inseparable or…

A new version of Mann's book "Geoffrey Chaucer" (1991), with expanded references, footnotes, and bibliography. A new preface (pp. vii-xix) sketches developments in "Chaucerian gender studies" since c. 1990 and argues that Chaucer's exploration of…

Contrasts FranT with analogous medieval accounts of wife exchange to argue that Chaucer's "unusual" version "testifies to Arveragus's regard for his wife and to Aurelius's regard for Averagus's regard for his wife." Other versions testify to male…

Mann identifies sources for Mel 7.1178-79, 1184, and 1186-88; and for ParsT 10.144, 261-63, 274, 331-32, 382-84, 630, 657, 694, and 822.

Mann describes the composition and influence of the "Liber Catonis," a composite of six Latin texts that served as a school-text in medieval education, and considers it in light of other medieval school-texts. Identifies places where works that…

Examines "how animals mean" in beast fable, beast epic, and related literature in classical and medieval traditions, focusing on the uses of animals in Marie de France, Nigel of Longchamp, "The Owl and the Nightingale," the Reynard tradition,…

Reads FranT as an epitome of the CT to the extent that both are concerned with the "ideal of patience and the problems of time and change," emphasizing the universality of these concerns and their appearances throughout the CT. As in Marie de…

Argues that medieval Latin satiric writers such as Nigel of Longchamps and Walter of Châtillon contributed to the "essential nature" of Chaucer's "poetic imagination." In WBP, NPT, and elsewhere, Chaucer capitalizes on the satiric potential…

Critiques Roy Vance Ramey's defense of the Manly-Rickert text of CT and castigates Ramsey's own methods and practices. The Manly-Rickert edition is valuable for its demonstration that "recension" cannot be used to construct a reliable text of CT, and…

Establishes that GP is an example of the medieval literary genre of estates satire, i.e., a "satiric representation of all classes of society," based on occupation. Surveys the tradition of the genre, including works that only draw on "estates…

Argues that "Inferno" V does not justify dismissing Francesca's love for Paolo as "lust," given the continuity between the "disiato riso" that leads them to kiss and the "santo riso" of Beatrice that draws Dante upward to Paradise. Echoing Dante and…

Provides a landscape of medieval courtly love, particularly within the French tradition, and evaluates how Chaucer explores intricacies of love in TC.

A collection of Jill Mann's previously published essays, edited with an introduction by Mark David Rasmussen. The Preface explains that the essays are organized around exploring the implications of key words as ways to understand human experience in…

Argues that various narrative and stylistic devices in KnT evoke the question "Does human life have a final meaning?" The poem begins with an ending and ends with a beginning, these complemented throughout by stoppings and startings and various…

Questions claims that BD is a poem of consolation, arguing that it is instead a "renewal of grief," focusing its three units of "reading, dreaming, [and] remembering," attending to source materials, and suggesting that the Black Knight may have been…

Explores the "aristocratic, moral, and Christian" understandings of "gentilesse," listing the entailed ideals of truth, benevolence, mildness, etc. as expressed in ParsT, Gent, and in French courtly tradition. Argues that a complex understanding of…