Browse Items (16472 total)

Centers on medieval self-definition rather than subjectivity and studies examples of Wycliffite lay instruction. The Lollards rejected auricular confession and emphasized personal contrition for sin. Lollard pastoral texts disrupted traditional…

Masciandaro investigates the vocabulary of work (travail, labour, swink, werk, craft) and its cultural significance in late medieval England, exploring depictions of the history of work in Middle English literature (including Gower, a treatise on…

Depictions of marriage in a range of late Middle English texts engage concerns with lay and ecclesiastical authority and promote interests of "the lay middle strata." The book opens with a reading of how FranT expresses in its "discourse of…

Kuskin presents a manifesto on history-of-the-book studies as well as on the need to rethink Chaucerian reception. The volume is divided into three sections: "Capital and Literary Form," "Authorship and the Chaucerian Inheritance," and "Print 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,…

Reads NPT as Chaucer's self-reflexive "ars poetica," a Menippean parody of the complexities of engaging with language and literature. Through subtle play with the traditional liberal arts education, especially the trivium, NPT explores imitation,…

Applies psychoanalytical analysis to Boccaccio's "Il Filostrato," Chaucer's TC, and Robert Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid," tying "literary neighbor relations to the social and political realities of the late Middle Ages."

Focuses on Anglo-Saxon architecture and poetry and draws connections between physical spaces and literary texts. Argues that Anglo-Saxon buildings should be viewed as "dynamic spaces" to enrich an understanding of development of Anglo-Saxon…

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…

Suggests we cannot necessarily assume that, in medieval texts, every instance of an "I" must represent a fictionalized narrator who has a persona that can be analyzed and ultimately held responsible for various details of, or problems within, the…

Beginning with Gildas' depiction of England as a beautiful garden, explores metaphorical and physical gardens in medieval English cultural history, arguing that Chaucer indicates "awareness of nation as landscape" in CT. Chapters 2 and 3 emphasize…

Explores how the "sacred and the secular interact" in Latin, French, and English texts and frames this "crossover concept" as key to understanding medieval literature. Includes discussion of PrT, FranT, KnT, MLT, WBPT, LGW, and TC.

Collection of interdisciplinary manuscript studies and critical essays presented at the "New Directions in Medieval Manuscript Studies and Reading Practices in Honour of the 80th Birthday of Derek Pearsall" conference on October 21-22, 2011. Includes…

Provides close reading and interpretation of "Piers Plowman," and observes how Chaucer and Langland often share similar political and religious views of medieval society. Refers to SumT, WBPT, GP, KnT, ParsT, RvT, and PF.

Studies the medieval and early modern theory of tropological, or moral, sense of Scripture. Argues that tropology can be "theory of literary and ethical invention" as a way to interpret the Bible. Includes brief discussions of Langland's and…

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…

Approaches Chaucer's works briefly through contrast with :"Piers Plowman," which is treated here as the key text in a tradition of literature defined by "a distinctive poetics of enigma." Observes that Chaucer explores horizontally across the earthly…

Explores the concept of "cooperative" or "conjoint" agency in Chaucer's works to examine ideas "about the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity." Examines the notion of passivity in the works of Chaucer and Bernard of Clairvaux, as well as…

Traces a history of Chaucer reception in the context of Christian controversies by "situating Chaucer and the Chaucerian tradition in an international environment of religious controversy spanning four centuries." Emphasizes how Chaucer "engaged with…

Summarizes how contemporary intertextual theory complicates traditional notions of source relations. Surveys intertextual relations in Chaucer's works, especially examples where, by failing to "include the conclusion" from his source(s), Chaucer…

Chaucer's presentation of a Trojan parliament unanimously resolving, despite the reasonable objections of Hector, to exchange an innocent Criseyde for a wicked Antenor (TC IV, 141-217), makes allusions to the trial of Christ before Pilate; Chaucer's…

Many details and images of NPT become obvious symbols of eroticism if compared to more explicitly sensual literary and artistic works of the Midddle Ages.

Refutes the view that Chaucer's portrayal of the Knight in CT and the portrait of Arthur in the alliterative 'Morte Arthure' are condemnatory.

Buk is notable for its extensive use of proverbs; Chaucer offers good advice but cannot expect it to be taken too seriously.

Explores how some poststructuralist contributions to the theory of narrative enable a feminist rereading of two of the tales and suggests that Chaucer presents a bleak view of male-female relations.