Browse Items (16472 total)

Chaucer approaches history as a subject and human beings as individualized subjects within history, examining the medieval view of history as degeneration from an ideal and developing the modernist, humanist view of history. In Anel, Boethianism…

Confessional literature illumines the Pardoner's performance by explaining the motives which lie behind it. Parallels with the "false confession" and an analysis of the pitfalls of despair and presumption suggest that the Pardoner is suffering from…

Th and Mel should be read in light of Chaucer's struggle to define his authorial role in opposition to courtly "makers"--thus, the appropriation of minstrel performance in Th and of a narrator and hero described in terms associated with children. Th…

Review article.

Considers "political agendas" that governed the development of Chaucer scholarship and textual criticism and analyzes medieval studies in terms of current theories about historicism. CT bears "a privileged relation" to the historic moment. Chapters…

Although Chaucer was associated with the aristocratic seigniorial and mercantile classes, in the first eight tales he vigorously asserts the aggressive voice of peasant protest--fully in MilT but reverting to a somewhat more traditional and…

Literary meaning is not an "atemporal constant but a historical variable." The appropriate challenge to exegetical criticism comes through a history of reading. Examines TC in light of the medieval understandings of love articulated as the "seven…

Investigates traditions of medieval antifeminism to show the ambivalences present in the Wife, whom Chaucer presents as both a satire on womanhood and a threat to orthodox male authority.

Comparison with contemporary documents show ParsT to be a manual for penitents; homiletic elements are minimal and the appeal is to reason rather than the emotions. Despite numerous minor inconsistencies ParsT has a clear and effective structure. …

Assesses alchemy as a verbal and social practice in Chaucer's day, arguing that alchemical discourse raised with particular intensity the problem of the verbal representation of truth; alchemical study helped undermine the clerical monopoly on…

During the reign of Richard II, love poetry such as Clanvowe's "Book of Cupid" was a means whereby courtiers could interrogate the "power, patronage and lordship" of the fetishized court. Patterson considers Clanvowe's allusions to Chaucer in this…

Max Weber's distinction between an "ethics of commitment" and an "ethics of responsibility" can help make the connection between theoretical assumptions and pedagogical practices explicit. An "ethics of commitment" leads to the idea of the teacher…

A new-historicist reading that focuses on the conditions of marriage depicted in WBPT to show how the Wife uses the late-medieval marital system for her own private, emotional advantage. She capitalizes on the social and economic opportunities of…

A revised, shortened version of Patterson's "Perpetual Motion: Alchemy and the Technology of the Self."

Examines the "uncomfortable sense of selfhood" recorded in Hoccleve's works, a sense of an individual lost within the press of responsibilities. Patterson remarks on Chaucer's influence and suggests that the older poet was beyond conventional praise…

Two essays: 1) "The Place of Philology" argues that the MLE is Chaucer's late and revised addition to CT and that it is properly followed by WBP; Patterson confronts the manuscript evidence and suggests several structural and thematic continuities…

The narrator of PrT desires to transcend the particularities of language and history, echoing patterns of medieval Jewish martyrdom connected to the "kiddush ha-Shem," which may have been known in Chaucer's England. Complex textual and historical…

A critique of psychoanalytic approaches to medieval literature--based on the "fatal flaws" of "Freudian methods of inquiry"-and a rejection of psychoanalytic approaches to Chaucer's Pardoner, including Patterson's previous work. Patterson suggests an…

Considers ClT in light of historical context, particularly the events of Richard II's marriage to Isabel of France.

Reprints seven of Patterson's essays, with a new introduction, "Historicism and Postmodernity" (pp. 1-18), that explains why he pursues the "micronarratives" of New Historicism rather than those of psychoanalytic criticism. Patterson affirms the…

Patterson reads ClT in light of negotiations over the marriage of Richard II and Isabelle of France in 1396 and of the texts surrounding those negotiations, especially those concerned with the ideology of sacral kingship. Chaucer knew of the marriage…

Chaucer's Anel explores the "dilemma of the modern poet in the late Middle Ages." The "Thebanness" of the text engages its Boethianism as a competing and fatalistic view of memory and history. Allusions to Statius, Corinna, Virgil, Ovid, Dante, and…

Ten essays by Patterson on historical criticism, teaching medieval studies, Clanvowe, Hoccleve, Lydgate, Chaucer, Saint Francis, etc.; nine of the ten essays are reprinted. For the one essay published here for the first time that pertains to Chaucer,…

Considers Chaucer's understanding of "tragedy" in Bo, MkT, and TC, tracing this understanding to Dante's use of the term in his "Inferno," where it is affiliated with history. In TC, Chaucer chose to emulate Boccaccio's "Filostrato" because doing so…

Studies the marginalia printed with the 1606 edition of "The Plowman's Tale," arguing that it challenges both Papal authority and the Church of England, encouraging Puritanism. Also discusses the place of this edition in the tradition of Chaucer…