Browse Items (16471 total)

Applies "register-theory" to PardPT to demonstrate Chaucer's "Gothic" juxtapositioning of various kinds of discourse. Jeffrey examines the mode, domain, topic, and tenor of the discursive units in PardPT and suggests that the characteristic variety…

Jager draws upon commentary by Jacques Le Goff and Gerhard Dohrn-van Rossum regarding how time was measured in the late Middle Ages. He argues that ShT indicates how merchant time, space, and values triumph over those of the Church, because of an…

Hughes reads CT as an allegorical political critique of the reign of Richard II. The GP descriptions allegorically represent aspects of Richard's personality or persons in his court. Each of the individual tales comments on specific political events…

Horobin explores how linguistic issues affect questions of attribution, reception, and manuscript authority, focusing not only on lexicon but also on orthography, phonology, and grammar. The language of the Hengwrt manuscript of CT (perhaps produced…

In RvT 3944 and FrT 1614, "panne" can be read as the plural of penny instead of pan or dish. In early fourteenth-century Type II London dialect, "panne" is a common variant of "peni." In this light, Chaucer's authorship of fragments B and C of Rom…

Honegger argues that analyses of international forms of address would gain depth if critics considered "situational" factors and even "competing interactional" factors along with traditional considerations of ye/thou pronouns. Focuses on addresses to…

Holliday considers Eric Gill's wood-engraving illustrations to The Canterbury Tales (4 vols., Golden Cockerel Press, 1929-31) in light of Gill's collaboration with Robert Gibbings (owner of the press), the legacy of Edward Johnston (Gill's teacher of…

Introduces students to Chaucer's life (opening chapter), comments on critical approaches to Chaucer, and presents several groups of recurring topics in CT: gender, religion, race, and class; love, sex, and marriage; God and spirituality; adaptations…

ManT and the depiction of the Manciple reflect Chaucer's effort to undermine bourgeois threats to court culture, his critique of practical "wit," and, simultaneously, his affirmation of the destructive power of adultery.

In light of Cicero's "De amicitia," the noble friendship between Troilus and Pandarus helps to elevate TC to a great tragedy.

Mentions MLT, PrT, and ClT in the larger context of gender and blood in medieval culture. McCracken argues that gendered cultural values are "mapped onto blood and that cultural values are inscribed into a natural order." Compares Chaucer's MLT with…

Chancery highlighted problems posed in the medieval common law courts by failures in jurisprudence. MLT raises questions about injustice that reflect critically on the Sergeant of Law. Though he is shown to be an expert in jurisprudence, he is…

In her "active suffering," Criseyde reflects a Boethian notion of agency. In her prudential counseling of Troilus, she properly dissuades him from "treasonable elopement in time of war." The article explores how Criseyde's advice to Troilus and her…

TC exhibits a notable conflict between gift and not-gift economics--between ideal giving and practical commodity exchange. The rules of courtly love, ostensibly designed to ennoble the lover and enable "true" love, in practice disallow unconditional…

The romance "The Siege of Thebes" being read by Criseyde at the beginning of the poem prepares us for her preoccupation with "siege" throughout the work. Pandarus persuades her to conceptualize Troilus as an antidote for the siege's danger, while…

Machan studies the "social meanings, functions, and status of the English language in the late-medieval period," i.e., its "sociolinguistic contextualization." He explores Henry III's letters of 1258; the relationships between language, dialects, and…

Subjectivity and a sense of the importance of the inner self and the individual developed gradually from the early Middle Ages to the seventeenth century. Nothing is altogether new in the stunning early-modernist sense of a vast, inner world of the…

In response to Gower's words to Chaucer at the end of "Confessio Amantis" (8.2941-57), Chaucer first revised LGWP and then completely restructured the plan for CT (e.g., taking Mel away from the Man of Law and giving him a "Gower" tale instead).

Late-medieval preoccupation with mortality defies the solace of fiction. PhyT and PardT offer no hope of physical or spiritual life, and ParsT kills storytelling.

Prints handwritten summaries from a copy of the 1550 edition of Chaucer's works (Cambridge University Library Peterborough B.6.13) and discusses their usefulness for a history of the literary argument, documenting one reader's response to CT and…

Discusses the idea of the anthology as a fundamental characteristic of medieval literature, using CT as an example because individual tales were often copied into other anthologies.

The absence of details of physical dress or adornment applied to Custance in MLT coincides with the presentation of her as a virtuous, Christian heroine. Though descriptive details are conventional in romances, their relative absence here is…

Leech attempts to formulate a context for understanding medieval body images, using Rolle, Hilton, Julian of Norwich, and Kempe along with Chaucer. Chapter 5 considers KnT, GP, WBT, and ParsT.

The Wife's discourse is on the cusp between the clerkly and the carnivalesque. She is the unstable product of the interplay of various intertexts, creating the illusion of a complex personality. Though sometimes championed by feminists, she at once…

Lawler argues that Chaucer privileged simplicity and disapproved of decadence and over-refinement. Lexical examination demonstrates Chaucer's preference for "delicacy," evident most clearly in Griselda of ClT and supported by evidence from KnT and…