Browse Items (16470 total)

Discusses Chaucer's English inheritance from a Taiwanese-Chinese point of view. Reviews multilingualism in Chinese and medieval English cultures, and examines Chaucer's cross-cultural and multilingual literary experience in fourteenth-century…

Applies Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of the "carnivalesque," which provides a "context for understanding the importance of laughter" in CT. The Miller focuses on physical pleasure and natural instinct in MilT; his disregard for rules of social hierarchy…

Argues that medieval English literature in general, and Chaucer's poetry in particular, is primarily a product of a cross-cultural and multilingual experience. Compares multilingualism in Chinese with aspects of medieval English culture, and…

Connects the "Tale of Gamelyn" to Chaucer with respect to concerns of class, legal, and cultural issues, and focuses on the theme of vulnerability as an important conceit of the poem.

Examines the irony and paradoxes of ClT, claiming that through the Tale, the Clerk "challenges an audience as Griselda's impassive patience challenges Walter." Views the Clerk as a "complicated figure of utter submissiveness and essential silence…

Looks at the political and social context of Chaucer's life, and claims that in KnT Chaucer appropriated and transformed the conventions of romance to reflect his own political views about medieval kingship.

Argues that Chaucer's alterations of the conventions of romance in KnT indicate the poet's political caution in giving advice to his king, advising him in the figure of Theseus to deal with political trouble by valuing Parliament. In Korean with an…

Focuses on fabliau and the clothing of Chaucer's women in MilT, WBT, and RvT, and claims that "women's desire and independent will are materialized by means of [the] Wife of Bath's clothing."

Focuses on the clothing of Alisoun of MilT and the Wife of Bath, with attention to color, stereotyping, and economic conditions. In Korean, with an abstract in English (pp. 158-59).

Investigates the logic of "sovereignty" in PhyT, and how sovereignty is transferred from God, to nature, then to Virginia, and back to the people who "subvert the
entire political order" toward the end of the tale. Sovereignty is directly associated…

Examines Chaucer's concepts of wild and wilderness in MkT and argues that the Monk's inclusion of Cenobia is in response to the Host's comments about his own wife. This exchange is a mediation on "reccheless-ness," a wildness of character that can…

Analyzes SNT, MLT, and ClT to find forms of women's authority and determine how women's authority is constructed. Argues that women in these tales possess "charismatic, positional, and spiritual" authority as a result of their confrontations with…

Discusses medieval concepts of aging and Chaucer's depictions of old men in CT. Claims that Chaucer displays a balanced attitude in his depictions of old men, which differs from how medieval society tended to view the elderly in a negative light.

Analyzes the architectural constructions (especially walls) in KnT and TC. Claims that the "effect of a wall in Chaucerian narratives is the double-sidedness," because walls can invite and discourage connections between inside and outside spaces.

Explores Chaucer's reservations about the reliability of written documents by examining Donegild's counterfeit letters in MLT and Thomas Woodstock, duke of Gloucester's "Confession", written in 1397. Examines problems of written documents implicated…

Examines views of monarchy and Catholic/Protestant conflicts in Shakespeare's "second tetralogy," plays set during and soon after Chaucer's lifetime. Includes discussion of Falstaff as a figure viewed "through the lens of Chaucer's time"--a figure of…

Argues that CT (specifically GP, KnT, MilT, and RvT) and Bodiam Castle "converge as ideological constructions," comparing the lives of Chaucer and Sir Edward Dallingridge (builder of Bodiam)--both witnessed at the Scrope vs. Grosvenor trial--and…

Since PrT is set in Islamic "Asia," the anti-Semitism of PrT makes little historical sense, since medieval Muslims accepted Judaism in ways Christianity did not. Chaucer's knowledge of Jews and Muslims has been underestimated, even suppressed, a…

Although Astr can be read as "unmarked," or neutral in relation to issues of cultural otherness, its source in Messahala's Arabic treatise and its enfigurement of the astrolabe as feminine indicate that we can and should treat it (with other…

Examines an "uncanny chain of othering" whereby the GP description of the Prioress, the PrP, and PrT associate the Prioress with Jews through imagery of sensuality and filth. Also explores how this association reflects the "fears and fantasies" of…

In PrT, as in much canonical medieval literature, Jews are largely voiceless and depicted as vile. The lamentations, or "kinot," of Hebrew liturgical poets who mourn the Jewish victims of the crusades record the voices of medieval Jews. The imagery…

Surveys representative examples of northern English dialect ("Alliterative Morte Arthure," RvT), Scottish Chaucerians (Henryson, Dunbar), and non-Chaucerian Scottish works (Barbour's "Bruce," "The Wallace") to identify common and distinctive…

In HF, Chaucer defends poetry, indicating that despite its fictional nature and relativity, poetry is as valid as theology or philosophy.

Examining passages from BD, TC, and CT, Kim contrasts Chaucer's uses of multiple narrative voices with the ways other medieval writers write themselves and their readers into their texts.

Explores medieval theories of narrative closure in Matthew of Vendome, Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Brunetto Latini, and John of Garland to argue that if "inconclusiveness" is a thematic goal, the end of a work is the "natural place to accent it." As an…