Browse Items (16471 total)

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…

Argues that "astromye" in MilT (1.3451 and 3457) is an authorial malapropism.

For medieval poets, the "hyperreality of musical instruments" was "more significant" than was their reality. In "Beowulf," the harp signifies Hrothgar's agenda of political conquest and order; in Machaut's "Remedy of Fortune," the "instruments…

The Pardoner's "misunderstanding" of gluttony as a sin "becomes emblematic of his inability to appreciate significance in general." Lynch discusses digestive imagery from medieval commentaries on memory and meditation to clarify the nature of the…

Kelly re-considers the Pardoner's sexuality in light of biblical imagery, medieval medical lore, and fifteenth-century reception of PardT, arguing that implications of effeminacy in GP suggest neither homosexuality nor sterility but sexual…

The Sarum liturgy provokes powerful emotional response, as evident in PardT and in "Piers Plowman" (Passus 15; Passus 19).

The reception of the Pardoner can be more fully understood by examining medieval preachers' and orators' uses of examples, or stories that would "excite" an audience to behave virtuously. By "laying bare" his own selfish desires, the Pardoner elicits…

Ishino attempts to unravel enigmatic aspects of PhyT, especially the death of Virginia.

Death is preferred to rape in both PhyT and "Titus Andonicus" because both works take for granted the notion that rape results in pollution or disease. In this way, the works contribute to negative views of women and their bodies in Western…

A variety of ethical systems--Christian, Boethian, Epicurean, Ciceronian, etc.--were available to Chaucer's audience, and he engages these systems in ways that enable the audience to observe and choose among them. Like commentators on Epicurean…

Fourteenth-century English Breton lays, such as "Sir Degaré," "Sir Orfeo," and FranT, displace "Celtic" otherworlds to Brittainy and depict them as exotic, feminine, and supernatural-places of self-discovery that contrast with the domestic and…

Positioned midway between aristocracy and the lower orders of society, the Franklin appropriately tells a story that emphasizes the necessity and correctness of the social order as he (and Chaucer) would have understood it. Thus, the…

Commerce in automatons, mechanical contrivances, and other marvels or mirabilia in late-medieval Europe diminished the wonder of such objects and encouraged scepticism. Chaucer's FranT and SqT rationalize the marvels they present in ways that…

Physical and mechanical marvels suggest a mechanistic rather than a supernatural universe in SqT, Gower's version of the Alexander legend, and Sir John Mandeville's eastern marvels.

Chaucer enhances the rhetorical authority of SqT by following classical authorities, using figures such as Pegasus, the Trojan horse, and Sinon's persuasive deception as models and figures for the poem's rhetorical operation. Chaucer understood and…

Reads MerT for the ways it confronts and rejects skeptical nominalism. The Merchant considers the possibility that language "has sense but no reference"--that it is only games--but the absurdity of January's decision to marry undercuts this notion,…

Baker and Morrison read MerT as a "sustained response" to Piers Plowman B.9. Both works are concerned with marriage, gender, and the pursuits of appetite. Whereas MerT poses a woman who must live expediently, Piers Plowman absorbs gender into…

Explores two folkloric motifs in ClT and "Lay le Freine": the patient wife and twin sisters who are rivals in love. Rooted in the same myth, the stories imagine alternatives to patriarchal culture as well as dramatizing wifely obedience and female…

The Clerk and T. S. Eliot's title character in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" share intellectual interests. In addition, both are "caught" between the external and the internal, both are reluctant to speak, and both speak allusively.

Identifies possibilities for recognizing "political resonances" in ClT, discussing Walter's title (marquis) as it was granted in 1385 to Robert de Vere, Richard's favorite. The title was "unusual" and "short-lived" in Chaucer's experience. Olson…

Myles surveys medieval notions of natural and given signs, arguing that Griselda (and the reader with her) learns from her submission to Walter, insofar as it parallels a realist submission to quasi-nominalist understanding. Unlike Walter, Griselda…

Identifies "uncanny" resemblances between Griselda of ClT and Philippa de Coucy, wife of Robert de Vere. Similarities between the women and their treatment at the hands of their husbands (divorces) would have prompted Chaucer's immediate audience to…

Griselda reflects the "ordinary peasant woman" of Chaucer's age. Her anxieties about the burials of her children are similar to concerns found in guild records; both ClT and the guild records indicate late-medieval interconnections among poverty,…

ClT reflects aspects of Richard II's life and philosophy of kingship--and perhaps Chaucer's fanciful solutions to Richard II's political dilemma of an heirless realm: divorce or a consort advisor. The insistence on "obedience to authority" in ClT…

Examines several medieval notions of testing and promise-making, arguing that in ClT the Clerk makes fun of naive "essentialist" allegory. Haines reads wit and sarcasm in Griselda's tone at the "portentous" line 666 and suggests that this tone helps…