Browse Items (16470 total)

In light of Gerald Brun's investigations into historical hermeneutic theories, Chaucer may be seen as employing messenger figures throughout his oeuvre, from BD to CT. This role applies especially to Alys of Bath (despite her claims on Venus and…

The "hostes man" who follows the begging friars of SumT can be identified as the servant of their innkeeper, who follows after them to carry their ill-gotten gains.

Examines exegetical interpretations of and allusions to the story of Ruth. Chaucer's allusion to Ruth in LGWP expresses alienation and belatedness and asserts poetic privilege and the interpretive creativity of marginality.

Capitalizing on foregoing treatment of fidelity and intention, the ending of FranT poses a hypothetical and interminable debate over reading the characters. In this concluding turn, Chaucer points up an essential link between the characters' selves…

BD is an "open-ended legend of imagination in which grief is accepted rather than eradicated...(Its) main theme is the reanimation of imagination." It proceeds by "structures of inconsequence that draw attention away from theme to poetic method." …

Exegetical criticism of Alcyone in BD misleads since it neglects the traditional significance of Alcyone (as in Petrarch and Boccaccio).

Examines the relationships between (mis)reading and (mis)writing, exegesis, and the unconscious in HF.

Identifies WBP as the inspiration for Harriet Byron's burning of a prayer book in the second act of Jane Austen's play, "Sir Charles Grandison," noting in both works the importance of hyperbole, the manipulation of language, and ironic commentary on…

BD can be read not as a discontinuous apprentice work but as "a myth of the invention of poetry," with its stories and images yet to be molded into psychological and thematic cohesion. Imagination precedes signification.

Cites instances in which the Wife of Bath crosses over between binary sets (male/female, sex/gender, authority/experience), and suggests that she cannot be seen simply as a feminist. Nor is she simply a victim.

Edits thirty-four poems from Cambridge University Library, MS Ff.1.6--those found in no other manuscript--with texts, notes, glossary, and bibliography. The introduction includes discussion of language and scribes, and commentary on the poems' place…

Surveys criticism that considers the Ceyx and Alcyone story in BD, exegetical readings in particular, and edits a version of the tale found in fourteenth-century Ovidian manuscripts available in Chaucer's England, with full apparatus and with…

Defines "courtly love" and "parody" and examines three protagonists as parodic courtly lovers (Aucassin of the anonymous "Aucassin and Nicolette," Troilus of TC, and Calisto of Fernando de Rojas's "Celestina"), assessing them in light of Northrup…

Argues that the "innate absurdities" of the courtly love tradition invite parody and includes discussion of TC as a "sympathetic parody" in which "tone" is "governed by Boethian and Christian doctrines along with Chaucer's personal experience."

The form of GP is descended from the genre of the rhetorical catalogue of types, represented in simpler form by the lists of trees and birds in PF. In PF, the garden represents the world of timeless values and the catalogs the earth-bound realities;…

In medieval optical theory of intromission and in medieval romances, gazed-upon objects are understood to be more active than they are in modern theorizing of scopophilia. Tracing interdependencies of the romance genre and the masculine gaze in TC,…

Using the medieval concepts of "intromissive optics" and the passive viewer, Martin suggests that Chaucer in TC, KnT, and MerT employs conventions from outside the romance genre at the moment of sight. She contrasts this technique with that of…

Martin defends the "eclectic approach" she adopted in her book, "Chaucer's Women: Nuns, Wives, and Amazons" (University of Iowa Press, 1990), a critical posture that borrows from a variety of critical approaches.

Full-length studies of the women in Chaucer's poetry had to wait for the intense activity in feminist scholarship of the last two decades.

This is a short story, told from the first-person point of view of Chaucer's Plowman, who describes his early life, his distaste for his brother the Parson, and their pilgrimage to Canterbury.

The ending of TC is unified with the rest of the poem. Its abrupt shift from pagan setting to Christian message is a structural imitation of the Boethian distinction between temporality and eternity.

Deals with influence of Chaucer's FranT on James's "A Tragedy of Error."

The Levi-Strauss formula for the structure of myth can be applied to analogues of ShT to illuminate disputed interpretations. In a list of similar actions in columns, not chronological, the ShT shows eight implications of the Levi-Strauss formula.

Approaches political, social, and marital sovereignty as prominent concerns of CT: the Host's authority in GP and elsewhere, Theseus as ideal sovereign in KnT in contrast with the tyrants of PhyT and MkT, Mel as an allegory of a ruler's moral…

Fourteenth-century business practices, financial transactions,and fluctuating currency rates illuminate the characters of the ShT monk (a cloth merchant) and the GP Merchant, who probably would have chosen to travel in April, when the relative values…