Browse Items (16471 total)

Central to medieval love poetry is the figure of dying for love--found in works by Marcabru, Bernart de Ventadorn, Dante, Petrarch, Chaucer (BD, TC, complaints), and Alain Chartier, as well as in the Harley lyrics and the Findern manuscript. Donne…

Examines two mid-fifteenth-century complaints that reflect public distrust of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, arguing that these complaints are more Lydgatian than Chaucerian, since Chaucer's own complaints had little influence at the time. An appendix…

Yang considers several aspects of translation and the rhetoric of translation in TC: the narrator's "double role" as translator and author, Pandarus as translator, Diomede as a "force of the translation process," Criseyde as "text" that is…

Troilus cannot read the "text" of Criseyde's face because he is too self-absorbed. Thinking only of what she can do for him, he neglects her "context," fails to acknowledge her vulnerability, and thinks of her as an "image in stasis." Although…

Neither Pandarus, Troilus, nor Chaucer is to be taken at face value in TC 1.540-875. All three are deceivers.

Examines "the role rape plays in the formation of Criseyde's character," contrasting Criseyde with Helen of Troy and Lucretia. Criseyde is a "choosing subject," and the language of rape helps to define the ambiguities of choice she faces.

Play and game reveal to knightly protagonists human imperfection and divine truth. Pandarus is the "game-master" of TC, and Troilus achieves perspective through the game of courtly love.

Women in TC and Fernando de Rojas's "Celestina" seek to establish themselves and their fates through "control of language," but rhetorical control gives way as men eventually become subjects and women objects of physical desire.

Dividing TC into eighteen episodes highlights a series of analogous and oppositional relations centering on "ethical debt"; in addition, the poem's action can be charted through four cycles. Similar patterns, in some instances less symmetrical,…

Chaucer presents Calchus as both a father in misery and a "sheer opportunist," enabling us to see Criseyde's decision as her own. Shakespeare's Calchus is a manipulator; his Cressida, the object of manipulation.

Chaucer employs "costume signs" in TC, affecting plot and characterization. Signature costumes assigned to each character shed light on significant parts of the plot, as do the reversal and degeneration of costume patterns. Characterization through…

Goldstein assesses the "rhetoric of Troilus's suicidal death wish" in TC 1, 4, and 5, comparing passages with Boccaccio's version and challenging critical traditions that view Troilus's thoughts as merely rhetorical or absurd. Also evident in LGW and…

Mossser describes a watermark archive and a plan to mount the collection's data on the WWW, exemplifying the utility of the archive by identifying watermarks (and dates) of the paper stock in three manuscripts of CT: Cambridge MS Dd.4.24 [Dd],…

Studies Wynken de Worde's use of copy texts for his edition of CT. Although de Worde used Caxton's second edition, he also turned to an undetermined manuscript or manuscripts to improve the ordinatio of the work. The changes do not, however, indicate…

A visual and verbal history of the institution, community, and architecture of the almshouse attached to St. Mary's Church, Ewelme. Thomas Chaucer, who patronized one of two building campaigns of the church, is buried in the church with his wife,…

Bakhtinian analysis of allusions in The Faerie Queene, including the allusions to PF-particularly the catalog of trees.

Perkins examines the narrative strategies Hoccleve adopts--advisor, servant, court outsider, autobiographer, moralist, petitioner--as responses to the politically charged context of "Lancastrian poetry." This study identifies the political context in…

Mertz describes documents and commentary that relate to the illustrations of the Canterbury pilgrims by William Blake and Thomas Stothard, the latter published by Robert Hartley Cromek. The materials belonged to antiquarian Francis Douce (1757-1834)…

According to Knapp, the "emerging lay bureaucracy at Westminster" is closely aligned with vernacular literary production and a major factor in understanding Ricardian and Lancastrian cultures. As is evident in the career and writings of Hoccleve,…

Jasper examines Petruchio's use of clothing as a form of gender control in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, comparing it with similar uses of clothing in versions of the Griselda story-Boccaccio's, Petrarch's, ClT, and John Phillips's "The…

A teaching edition of "The Siege of Thebes," with introduction, marginal glosses, textual and explanatory notes, select bibliography, and glossary. The introduction and notes clarify Lydgate's engagement with KnT, the frame of CT, and TC and discuss…

Assesses the intertextual relationship of Lydgate's "A Balade in Commendation of Our Lady" with TC and with Alan de Lille's "Anticlaudianus," exploring how aureate diction contributes to the poem's "connection between poetry and redemption in…

Assesses Chaucer's response to ancient poetry, especially as Chaucer (like Dante) fuses the ancient with more recent models while pursuing the ancient concern with the tragic sorrows of love. Wetherbee comments on aspects of BD and HF, examines the…

In a wide-ranging study of the corporeality of medieval musical culture, Holsinger assesses the "polyphonic perversity" of Chaucer's Pardoner, i.e., the performances that highlight the Pardoner's rhetorical adeptness and distinguish his musical body…

Hacking describes cultural assumptions about dreams in Western tradition (biblical, Cartesian, Freudian, etc.), noting especially dreams' presumed separation from "reality" and the complexities of their relationships with narrative. He briefly…