Browse Items (16472 total)

Compares ClT with Boccaccio's tale of Griselda and the version by Juan de Timoneda, showing that Chaucer makes more extensive, more explicit, and more radical the class politics of the narrative, critiquing traditional assumptions about marriage and…

Akahori analyzes characteristics of May in MerT, focusing on her presence in January's garden and nuances of the adjective "fressh." Exploring instances of the word throughout CT, the author shows that its use in MerT is sarcastic.

In a larger investigation of the philosophical concept of sympathy, Lopez discusses the lack of sympathy, both personal and spatiotemporal, between May and January in MerT.

The two portions of SqT align the cultural differences between the Mamluk emissary and the Mongol court with the species differences between the falcon and Canacee. Capitalizing on symbolic, metonymic connections between animals and humans and…

SqT illustrates how "a poet may come to poetic and prosodic mastery." Chaucer's conscious creation of an inept teller who overuses or misuses rhyme, enjambment, and caesura illustrates the difficult process of maturing as a poet.

Hard and soft analogues to Dorigen's conversations with Aurelius in FranT indicate that she is less a victim than someone playfully complicit in "flirtation." Offering "positive rhetorical models," Boccaccio and Christine de Pizan depict women who…

Considers FranT rather than CYT Chaucer's clearest contribution to science fiction, a genre here presented with an ancient legacy. In FranT, Chaucer uses the "tension at the heart of science fiction--between the possible and the not necessarily…

Dorigen and Arveragus of FranT "demonstrate . . . deficiency in the cognitive skills inculcated by the medieval trivium," making them "vulnerable to the Orleans clerk's corruptions of the quadrivium." Weak critical thinking undermines their ability…

Reads FranT as Chaucer's satiric portrayal of the narrator, focusing on the character of the Franklin, contradictions within his narrative, his characters' concern with public show, and legal aspects of Arveragus and Dorigen's clandestine marriage.

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…

Middle English sermons and manuals of vices and virtues indicate that Chaucer's audience would have understood Jephtha's daughter as a figure of a loose woman. Through allusion to her, Chaucer creates a painfully ironic moment that characterizes…

Chaucer's additions to his sources in PhyT emphasize the "domestic contours" of the story. PhyT is a critique of the "social efficacy of the patriarchal family." Virginius first fails to protect his daughter and then murders her; he is "no better a…

Friedman argues that French comic "trade" literature is source material for PardP, identifying parallels in details and in the hucksterish rhetoric of the works. He suggests that the Pardoner's sexuality may have been influenced by discussion of the…

Sallust's association of avarice with effeminacy in "The War with Catiline" and Aulus Gellius's subsequent reiteration of the link in his "Attic Nights" are two possible sources for the combination of avarice with effeminacy in Chaucer's Pardoner.

Combines psychoanalysis, ethnography, and "queer theory" to examine pilgrimage, travel, and specific locations as narrative devices that undermine and assert masculinities in CT, especially those of the Pardoner, the Host, and the Knight in the…

There is a paucity of writing on indulgences in medieval vernacular literatures. Minnis explores depictions of pardoners and indulgences in PardP, Langland's "Piers Plowman, "and John Heywood's "The Foure PP" and "The Pardoner and the Frere."…

Patwell explores how the Pardoner "transgresses the boundaries between lay man and cleric and between lollardy and orthodoxy," focusing on how in PardPT Chaucer exposes extreme views about the Eucharist and how he targets what is being condemned…

Assesses Hoccleve's use of an "enfeebled persona" as a means to compete seriously with the "tasteful silences" of Chaucer and the "guilty fulminations" of Langland on the topic of vernacular poetic identity. Compares Hoccleve's "Male Regle" with…

Focuses on the rich meanings and implications of fragment in PardPT.

Sheridan assesses the "common logic" of puns and money in ShT. Both pose the threat of vacuity--meaninglessness or lack of value--while simultaneously offering pleasure.

Looking beyond the OED's definition of "span"--a length of roughly nine inches--to a range of medieval senses of the word suggests that the width of the Prioress's forehead "offers no meaningful foothold for objecting to her."

Kelly surveys depictions of non-Christians in Chaucer's works and in works familiar to Chaucer: "Speculum historiale" by Vincent of Beauvais, "Legenda aurea" by Jacob of Voragine, English legendaries, miracles of the Virgin, pictorial tradition, and…

Whereas the GP portrait of the Prioress raises questions about the operation of performances in general, we see in PrPT the efficacy of performative utterances in particular. Details of the boy's murder and postmortem singing demonstrate that the…

Discusses PrT and other versions of Marian miracles.

Bell argues that "The Joe Schmo Show" and Th "use metafictional parody to 'refunction' generic forms and critique stereotypes of masculinity."