Browse Items (16472 total)

Characters' sense of identity emerges variously from the varying contexts in which the selves operate. In medieval literature, this sense of identity, allied to function rather than "object-self," is drawn through purpose; "his own romantic vision"…

Electronic texts of Chaucer's works in plain text and html, with a concordance and glossary, translations, and links to images, a chronology, and various web resources.

Needham documents the prominence of beads in nineteen of the twenty-three woodcuts in Caxton's second edition of CT. Suggests that the illustrations were influenced by the "expanding cult of rosary devotions" in Caxton's time and describes the…

Examines "how Middle English writers appropriated different forms and figures of friendship in their discussions, critiques, and activations of friendship," describing modifications of classical, biblical, Boethian, and humanist models, with…

Reviews Chaucer's three uses of a crow (in ManT, PF, and as a "metaphor for the very blackness of blood" at the end of KnT) as a "marker for silence, sterility, and death."

Introduces Chaucer's life and works, emphasizing the "scope and diversity" of his poetry. Describes each of his major works, and anatomizes CT as "one of the earliest collections of short stories of almost every conceivable type," describing the…

Reviews interpretations of MerT. To use Genette's terminology, the Merchant as teller is an "intradiegetic" narrator among other narrators--extradiegetic (Chaucer the pilgrim), hypodiegetic (Justinus, Pluto), hypo-hypodiagetic (Solomon)--whose…

Reads Chaucer's lyric poetry as an important bridge or "hinge" between the medieval lyric poem and its modern successors.

Maintains that MLT represents cultural and textual transmission through a network of premodern media: voices, texts, bodies, culture, human actions, and nonhuman forces---media which represent an alternative to the hegemonic, institutional, and…

Asserts that Chaucer's inset lyrics in TC and LGW have a "tactical" quality that gives them flexibility and contingency. In TC, Antigone's song, using both English practices and French and Italian sources, demonstrates "a tension between negotiation…

Rethinks "formalism with respect to biopolitics" as articulated by Giorgio Agamben and describes "premodern and modern concepts of form, life, and rule," arguing that Chaucer's Truth, Gent, Sted, and especially For explore "the intersections between…

Argues that, rooted in "medieval theory of mediated perception" and concerned with perceptual distortion, HF shows how a "sensing body" participates in an "ambient mediascape"--one that includes environmental media (air, water, architecture) as well…

Unlike the knight of the chivalric theorists, who is ideally a force for justice and stability, the knight of the courtly romance is a solitary figure whose primary concern is self-fulfillment without regard to the community at large. As a courtly…

Nelson assesses medieval conceptions of marital "debt" (reflected in ParsT) in light of modern Speech Act Theory (Austin and Searle). The Wife of Bath's focus on the husband's contribution and the Merchant's focus on the wife's contribution reveal…

An anthology of narrative poetry that includes "The Cachoeira Tales," modeled on CT, with a number of distinct allusions to Chaucer's work, including a "General Prologue" that opens with references to April rains and several tales attributed to…

Argues that CT provides an aesthetic of irony and parody, where part of the pleasure of the experience entails ironic interpretation on the reader's part, thereby both entertaining and instructing.

Investigates Chaucer's biographical and literary "travels" to Italy, with chapters dedicated to 1) English travel to Italy; 2) Chaucer and the "Italian wedding" of Prince Lionel; 3) Chaucer and Petrarch; 4) Chaucer in Milan; and 5) the influence of…

Follows the history of rumor as a cultural force in art, literature, and politics in classical tradition and in the modern western world, as it relates to renown, fame, gossip, hearsay, news, contagious surmise, speculation, and propaganda. Includes…

Theorizes the classical figure of Echo as a figure to "think with" in exploring "female vocality" and the topos of the "Philosopher and the Shrew" in WBPT and ClT (especially the Envoy), focusing on issues of deafness, gendered gossip, listening, and…

Examines auditory cognition in BD, PF, and HF, attending particularly to "janglynge" and related concepts. BD illustrates differences between hearing and listening, while PF records a "paradigm shift" from seeing to listening, and HF reflects…

Examines how women are presented in medieval satire as gossips, scolds, and cursing witches, all manifestations of women with orality. Assesses works by Chaucer, Dunbar, and Kempe and material from cycle plays.

The archetype of initiation is the structural principle of TC. The archetype produces a number of images and actions illustrating the physical and spiritual development of the hero. The archetype is more revealing of the surface structure than of…

Assesses the arena and attendant temples in KnT as a squared circle, central symbol in the tale and its concerns with perception and reality.

Illustrated social history of late-medieval England for a juvenile audience, with occasional references to Chaucer.

CT responds to Dante's Commedia in a "conscious attempt " to continue its "poetic tradition" of pilgrimage narrative. Chaucer's pilgrims "comment or focus on one or more aspects of the Dantean pilgrimage," and both works define the human image and…