Browse Items (16472 total)

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…

Hernández Pérez explores kinship models implicit in the cultural "memory" of ClT, especially those that involve Walter's sister and the sending of children to a relative's household. Griselda's class and deference may reflect vestiges of marriage…

Bellamy considers Paridell's undermining of Britomart's "nostalgia for the fallen Troy" in Spenser's Faerie Queene, Book 3, and argues that the "slippages" between fame and rumor in HF influenced Spenser's presentation.

Surveys versions and adaptations of the Philomela-Procne-Tereus story from Euripides through Timberlake Wertenbaker's "Love of the Nightingale" (1988), observing overt and submerged motifs of incest and lesbianism. In LGW, the motifs are underscored…

Discusses the religious significance of MLT.

Discusses three topics - Ford Madox Brown's painting of Chaucer reading from MLT to a decadent court at a time of dynastic crisis, the current Middle Eastern situation, and the story of Noah's Flood - in relation to Chaucer's portrayal of Custance's…

Explores vows and vow-breaking in CT, arguing that ManT brings to tragic crescendo a concern with the transgression of marital vows and presents consequences as horrific as any in Greek drama.

The widow's poverty in NPT indicates the cloistered clergy's failure to practice humility, poverty, and charity. Altering his source materials, Chaucer highlights the contrast between the lifestyle of the Prioress and that of the widow and creates…

Examines the GP description of Chaucer's Physician, assessing the extent to which the Physician's astrological medicine is satiric when seen in relation to such works as Nicholas of Lynn's Kalendarium.

The anti-Semitism of PrT is attributable to the Prioress, not to Chaucer, who would have known Jews through the courts of Castile (referred to in MkT) and who presents Jews as "renowned historians and transmitters of knowledge in the field of…

Explores the often-submerged relations between Middle English romances and the Crusades, reading Th as Chaucer's rejection of the "pleasure of indoctrination directed against the pagan enemy." Considers Th "modern, partly even postmodern," in its…

Noji examines the Wife of Bath as a marginalized woman.

An extended example of "prosodic criticism," which comments on several passages of TC (1.1-21, 53-56, 99-133, 981-87, 1016-29; 2.109-47, 190-217, 309-28, 407-28, 443-48; and 3.1198-1211). Gaylord explains how Chaucer's poetry invites readers to be…

Presenting Troy in TC as the mirror image of London in the 1380s, Chaucer engages conflicting notions of history and historiography. In particular, his depiction of the Trojan parliament is a warning to his contemporaries. Chaucer embraces…

Traces the history of romance as a genre as it adumbrates the modern novel. Includes recurrent references to TC.

Fourteen chapters on the cultural legacy of the Trojan War, from archeology through literary versions to recent popular culture. Includes chapters on Latin and Roman classics (the works of Homer, Aeschylus, Euripides, and Virgil), the medieval…

Surveys representations of reading in literature from Abélard and Héloise to Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich, including commentary on TC. The "autonomy of the reader" developed in the fourteenth century.

Audio recording of hip-hop performance of adaptations of GP (cast as a bus trip), KnT, MilPT, PardPT, WBPT, and Ret (with additional tracks: "Rhyme Renaissance Prologue," "Rhyme Renaissance," and "Dead Poets"). Affiliated website at .

The authors critique several Korean translations of CT published since the early 1960s: those by J. Kim, B. Song, Dong-il Lee and Dongchoon Lee, and another attributed to J. Kim.

Explores difficulties of representing in Spanish translation the provincial Northern dialect of John and Aleyn of RvT.

Evaluating two CT manuscripts--Christ Church, Oxford, MS 152 (single exemplar) and British Library MS Harley 7334 (two exemplars)--the authors contend that analysis of spelling can be used to determine changes in exemplars in textual study. Because…

Caie describes how lay people gained access to the Bible in the late Middle Ages through sermons, compendia, and florilegia. Explores how Chaucer characterizes speakers through their uses of the Bible in CT (e.g., quotation, misquotation, selection,…

Discusses the uses and functions of classical myth in Chaucer's works from a double perspective: Chaucer's knowledge of the different stories and his creative adaptations of this material.

Victims of lovesickness, lovers who commit suicide in Chaucer and Gower do so by stabbing themselves in the heart, an action not found in their sources. Nor is there medical precedent for regarding the heart as the central organ of the circulatory…

Contrasts the "Chaucerism" of John Cheke and Edmund Spenser with the inkhorn habit of borrowing Latinate terms practiced by other Renaissance English writers.