Discusses what naturalism is and how it links a set of normative intuitions about gender and desire to a broader theory of what it means for humans to be a law to themselves. Central to MilT is Alisoun, the "single most compelling instance of a…
Miller, Mark.
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Although Chaucer is often considered a poet of love or of philosophy, an examination of the philosophical facets of CT--especially practical reason, individual agency, and autonomy--illuminates the ideologies of sex, gender, and love within his…
Miller, Mark.
Peter Brown, ed. A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture, c.1350-c.1500 (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2007), pp. 554-69.
Miller presents CT as a series of case studies on how social and ideological formulations shape subjectivities. He focuses on "aristocratic formalism" in KnT, sexuality and commodification in WBP, and notions of ethical perfection and moral purity in…
Miller, Mark.
Frank Grady, ed. The Cambridge Companion to "The Canterbury Tales" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 59-72.
Accounts for the "strangeness" of KnT, cataloguing various theoretical and interpretative approaches, beginning with Charles Muscatine's scholarly contributions and ending with Elizabeth Scala's "Desire in the Canterbury Tales." Links each of these…
Describes illustrations of CT from the second half of the nineteenth century through 1981, noting that instead of attempting to recapture the Middle Ages as it was, these works reflect the various times in which they were created.
Miller, Paul Scott.
Dissertation Abstracts International 51 (1990): 1222A.
Although classical, Renaissance, and modern satire may represent recognizable genres, a definition of medieval satire must be sought through consideration of how classical satirists were studied in medieval schools and how three poets wrote.
Miller, Ralph N.
Studies in Medieval Culture 7.2 (1964): 65-68.
Explores why Chaucer alludes to the "story of Procne and Philomena" at the awakening of Pandarus in Book 2 of TC even though he does not cite the tale when the "nightingale sings to Criseyde" later in the Book, commenting on readers' expectations and…
The Man of Law in his Prologue, in his characterization of Custance, and in his concept of Christ's "prudent purveiaunce" consistently revises his sources, especially Nicholas Trevet, into the materialistic terms of the world governed by Fortune. …
Miller, Robert P.
Leigh A. Arrathoon, ed. Chaucer and the Craft of Fiction (Rochester, Mich.: Solaris Press, 1986), pp. 219-40.
Apparent artistic infelicities and a concern with surface style reflect the Squire's immature mind, unformed tastes, and youthful impatience. SqT is not badly written or unfinished.
Miller, Robert P.
English Language Notes 23 (1985): 71-72
In the GP portrait Chaucer uses the metaphor of food that "snewed" to make an ironic comparison between the Franklin's epicureanism and the spiritual life represented by scriptural manna.
Cicero's ideal rhetorical style, which combined wisdom and eloquence, was redefined in Christian terms by Saint Augustine. Chaucer's Franklin, who pretends to follow Augustinian rhetorical ideals, in fact defines wisdom and eloquence in a worldly…
The Franklin revises the law of the sacrament of marriage according to the medieval understanding of Epicurus. Ironically, echoing Amis and la Vielle from the "Roman de la Rose," the Franklin advocates the pursuit of "ese" and "delit" and the…
Miller, Robert P.
Beryl Rowland, ed. Companion to Chaucer Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 326-51.
The much-disputed allegorical criticism of CT is a fairly recent phenomenon. Chaucer's allegories maybe either "formal" (e.g., ClT) or "informal" (e.g., KnT)--both styles deriving from "a reservoir of established menaings shared by the poet and his…
Miller, Robert P.
Chaucer Review 5.2 (1970): 147-60.
Assesses MilT as an "anti-authoritarian" complaint against the estates--the clergy, the courtly aristocracy, the "providers," and women--depicting "the kind of thing the Miller would like to see happen to such people."
Describes the "functional similarity" between medieval exempla of obedience and WBT and Gower's Tale of Florent, illustrating the similarity by discussing fair/foul transformation and inversion motifs in various exempla, and arguing that the…
Follows W. C. Curry (1926) in understanding the Pardoner to be a eunuch, and explores the Biblical and exegetical implications of this characterization, reinforced by animal imagery, and associated with the Pauline "vetus homo" (Old Man), arguing…
Miller, Robert P., ed.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.
An anthology of selections from Voragine, Augustine, Macrobius, Hugh of St. Victor, Vainsauf, Garland, Bury, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cicero, Ovid, Deschamps, John of Salisbury, Ramon Lull, Saint-Amour, Boethius, Andreas Cappellanus, Walter Map,…
Asserts that Chaucer's dream visions dramatize the act of reading and illustrate the author's interest in the reciprocity of author, text, and reader in making and renewing of meaning. Argues that Chaucer represents the failure of all kinds of…
Focuses on how Chaucer was perceived in Scotland in the fifteenth century, and how deliberate misattributions of Chaucer's writings created a "vehicle for 'Scottish' culture, identity, and nationalism."
Focuses on how CT influences English science fiction authors such as Margaret Atwood, James Gunn, and Dan Simmons. Also analyzes the "pilgrimage motif"; refers to HF, LGW, and TC; and discusses "Chaucerian science fiction" in South America.
Examines three interiors within HF, and the use of the "catalogue" as a way of articulating and revealing the spatial relationships within the poem. Compares the "navigation of space" in HF to classical and medieval techniques of a "memory palace."
Miller, T. S.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 114 (2015): 373-400.
Maintains that in Anel, a poem about the faithless lover Arcite, the poet narrator is also false both in specific details and in reference to his putative sources. Argues that Chaucer emphasizes "the deception inherent in his poetic process" in a…
Miller, T. S., and Elizabeth Miller.
Extrapolation: A Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy 62 (2021): 133-56.
Connects the "gendered terror" of female sexuality and the "evasiveness" of J. R. R. Tolkien's treatment of sexual violence against women in his Middle-Earth narratives, and assesses suppression of rape in Tolkien's 1939 bowdlerized version of RvT in…
Miller, Timothy S.
Studies in Medievalism 28 (2019): 148-75.
Surveys "(neo)medievalism in contemporary board-game culture," including discussion of two games inspired by CT: the "roll-and-move" "Hazard: From the Canterbury Tales" and "The Road to Canterbury."
