Browse Items (16470 total)

Item not seen; reported in Encomia 32-33 (2010-2011): 201, with an abstract in French by Isabel de Barros Dias that indicates attention to MerT.

Halfim summarizes social conditions of Jews in early English society and assesses the depiction of Jews in PrT (pp. 22-34), Marlowe's "The Jew of Malta," and Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice." The authors of all three works reiterate Christian…

TC is best understood in terms of the tradition of "discordia concors," the harmonization of opposites, which Chaucer saw exemplified in the "school of Chartres" and Jean de Meun. Chaucer's profound philosophical insight, which linked the perfection…

Discusses links among eros, melancholia, and acedia as well as the tragic psychological dilemma of love in Petrarchan sonnets, Dante, and TC, especially in Chaucer's use of the Petrarchan sonnet "S'amor non e." The "oxymoronic essence" of TC allows…

The Host's use of "tredefowel" in MkT and NPE suggests that he may have been aware of "cock" as an obscenity (as well as a symbol for priest), a meaning supported by evidence from other languages, literature, and iconography.

Argues that CT is a major source for O'Connor's story, evident in their shared motifs of pilgrimage and storytelling, the name Bailly/Bailey, and specific echoes of PardT

Describes the "ironic associations" of the summoner's oaths in FrT, particularly those that invoke St. James and St, Anne.

Explores the agency of objects in medieval understanding, focusing on this concern in books of hours, Margery Kempe, the Tale of Albinus and Rosemund in Gower's "Confessio Amantis," and the stone idol in SNT.

Discusses Chaucer's thematic thread of accessibility of legal rights to women in FranT and PhyT. Dorigen, in FranT, and Virginia, in PhyT, are women trapped as objects of medieval law, or as properties whose control or outright ownership is the…

Examines late medieval British literary texts (lyrics, pastourelles, flytings, "alewife poems," "schoolroom texts," etc.) for their use of obscene language and imagery to shape and convey attitudes toward gender and sexuality, both positive and…

Chaucer's intentional contrasting of the language of the Knight and that of the Miller challenges his readers' openmindedness. The Miller's obscene language is cleverly applied and should on no account be censored from prudishness.

A "premodern conceptual history" of obscurity in literature, with emphasis on rhetorical traditions, philosophy, and exegesis. Includes comments on Mel and Th as literary examples of the "vices of narration" described in rhetorical handbooks.

Analyzes the "structural sections" of the Hengwrt manuscript (Hg) to describe the complex process of its copying and construction, concentrating on such matters as hands, inks, running titles, quiring, and the abrupt ending of CkT, and suggesting…

Emends three readings of the Corpus ms. of TC (1.502, 1.458, 1.89) and notes that evidence does not support the theory of extensive authorial revisions.

Considers the theme of common profit in PF and Chaucer's treatment of source material, drawing examples from his uses of Dante and Boccaccio to evince that Chaucer is never an "arido tradittore" (dry translator) but an original poet.

Tallies eleven texts in thirty-three manuscripts, arranged and described under three headings: translations of the Latin "Trotula" (cited in WBP), versions of "The Sekenesse of Women," and related texts. Explores the readership of these texts and…

HF, PF, and LGW are examples of "play" in Huizinga's sense. At once occasional poems and investigations of poetic theory, they act together to permit Chaucer to depart, in CT, from traditional poetics and perhaps politics.

Twelve essays by Scattergood, seven reprinted and five here published for the first time. Chaucer is cited in several of the reprinted essays, one of which is an extended analysis of Purse: "London and Money: Chaucer's Complaint to His Purse."

Studies the tradition of rhetorical "occupatio" and Chaucer's uses of the device in BD, HF, LGW, TC, and KnT.

Chaucer's narrative persona is related to the Ockhamist controversy in that his narrator struggles with questions of experience and authoritative knowledge and of whether experience can convey truth. Particularly in Chaucer's dream-vision poems,…

This edition of the northern version of the Middle English romance "Octovian" complements the editor's earlier edition of the southern version in the MET series (Heidelberg, 1979) and includes a full introduction, apparatus, notes, and glossary. The…

Investigates TC fragments as a window into how Chaucer's first readers experienced and interpreted his works.

Set against the eschatology of the Last Judgment, medieval narratives prompt their audiences to employ complex - often deferred - criteria for interpretation or evaluation. Shimomura considers how audience judgment is engaged and complicated in…

Studies "the bibliographic sensibility that characterized late medieval English manuscript culture," analyzing "the dialectical interaction between literary representation and its material support in a selection of late Middle English poems."…

Cites the folk motif of "burying Death" under an oak tree and identifies "numerous parallels" between the Old Man of PardT and Odin from Norse mythology to argue that Odin is the "prototype" of the Old Man.