Browse Items (16472 total)

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…

Studies clothing in imaginative literature, arguing that writers of romances redirect the negative depictions of the courtly body found in clerical chronicles and penitential writings into positive images that convey virtue. While religious and…

Describes the "traditional Christian" symbolism that underlies the fowler/bird and winter/spring imagery in LGWP 125-39, identifying biblical roots, exegetical commentary, and literary examples that precede Chaucer, suggesting that the "alert…

Deals chiefly with Patristic and Gnostic traditions.

An introduction to satire for classroom use, directed at university students and focusing on English literature from Chaucer to Carol Ann Duffy; concerned with definitions, social contexts, and the transaction between reader and text. The discussion…

Identifies the "compound humor" of the "geographic dialect" material in RvT and the GP description of the Reeve, where he is depicted as an "immigrant" from Norfolk to London and thereby the butt of humor for indigenous Londoners.

An anthology of examples, arranged chronologically, of literary, social, and political satires; includes a prose translation (by Robert Lumiansky) of PardPT, with a brief introduction.

Anthologizes samples of satire from classical to modern literature, arranged by genre (Prose and Drama, Verse, Epigrams), including modernizations (by Nevill Coghill) of FrPT and SumP under Verse. The Foreward (pp. xv-xxxiv) describes the…

Anthologizes theoretical essays and illustrative examples of literary satire drawn from the ancients through the moderns. Designed for classroom use, with a glossary of terms, a bibliography of suggestions for further study, and an index. Includes…

The satiric fable, with oral origins among the Orientals and Greeks, is usually characterized by economy, light-heartedness, and singleness of impression. The popularity of the genre continued into the Middle Ages and beyond not only because of its…

Describes the cognitive condition of "mind blindness," often associated with autism, and argues that a literary version of the condition recurs in satire, where authors use the blind spots of characters to ironically convey unstated information. Uses…

Both "Pearl" and ClT use comparatives for contrasts with a notion of satisfaction signified by the words "enough" and "suffisaunce." The set of related words in ClT, including "sadness," "suffraunce," "outrely," and other words of degree and…

Fourteen literary studies that range across Old English, Old French, Anglo-Latin, Middle English, and medieval Irish, Spanish, and Italian. For four essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Satura under Alternative Title.

Contends that Cresseid's maturation in Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid" includes an evolving contemplation of free will, as one finds in Boethius and in Chaucer's depiction of Troilus in TC.

Describes the neo-Platonic, Chartrian tradition in which astral influence (or determinism) includes Saturn as a figure of wisdom as well as cold, temporal destiny, suggesting that the depiction of the god/planet in "De Universitate Mundi" by Bernard…

Medieval mythographies interpret Saturn in various ways: astrologically, euhemeristically, morally, naturally, and Neoplatonically. Interpretation of Saturn in KnT should entail recognizing this complexity of influences rather than privileging only…

Explores the contrast between Theseus and Saturn in KnT as a metaphor for the lives of modern academic Chaucerians.

Traces the evolution of the romance to the start of the sixteenth century, and its repositioning from an aristocratic genre to one that was embraced by the common audience. Claims this move marks a shift from violence in its early stages to one of…

Critics' inability to sympathize with Troilus in TC results from their failure to recognize the "medieval practical reasoning that informs Troilus's deliberations and ultimately humanizes him." His philosophising "reflects a withdrawal from the…

Discusses the tenuous nature of Henry's early success in usurping Richard's crown and his program of enlisting writers in support of his cause. The last stanza of Purse reflects the political assumptions that underpinned Henry's claims to the…

Comments on Chaucer's and Langland's engagements with philosophical debates of their age, especially determinism and voluntarism. Includes discussion of the tensions between KnT and MilT as Chaucer's poetic expression of philosophical concerns.

Traces the figure of the "sursanure" in FranT, demonstrating that this superficially healed wound is an apt metaphor for Chaucer/s soft or "sunken" sources.

Uses HF, which sets "archival totality" in an uncertain relation to the experience of reading, to introduce a discussion of how in our reading "discursive systems, rather than particular texts, become objects of knowledge." Aims to theorize a…

Reads HF as an example of how a literary work constructs "discursive scale," making us self-conscious about how we read and interpret, when we read closely, and when we distance ourselves and see the text in relation to genres and systems, history,…

Assesses "gossip" about an emotional or sexual relationship between Rickert and John Matthews Manly, co-editors of "The Text of the Canterbury Tales" (1940).