Browse Items (16472 total)

Askins treats Mars and Ven as two halves of a single poem, reading them together as the "first epithalamium" in English, a celebration of the marriage that took place in spring 1386 between Elizabeth of Lancaster (daughter of Gaunt) and John Holland.…

Cawsey surveys the legacy of the plowman figure in England from the late Middle Ages into the Renaissance, focusing on the composite work "I Playne Piers." The Plowman's Tale was used and reused in multiple ways, presented variously by editors and…

Examines concern with land ownership in the Tale of Gamelyn in light of contemporary land values and incomes. The audience of the poem may have considered Sir John's division of his property in the poem both legal and morally justified.

Describes the unique copy of portions of "Sidrak and Bokkus" found in Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, Amsterdam, MS M199, an early modern alchemical miscellany. Accompanying the selections, manuscript annotations refer to a wide variety of…

Lists examples from Chaucer's works of rhetorical devices recommended by Aristotle and/or used by Ovid, demonstrating Chaucer's place in the rhetorical tradition of Western European literature.

Overview of workshops conducted under the auspices of CAPITAL (Creativity and Performance in Teaching and Learning), a combined effort of the University of Warwick and the Royal Shakespeare Company. The authors also comment on a "study day"…

Anderson illustrates the use of mirror metaphors, common in medieval literature and theology alike, in Chaucer's texts (e.g., SqT, KnT, Rom, For, and Wom Unc). Humanity's internal mirror should reflect the image of God, but human reason can be…

Galler studies the theme of death in Middle English literature and argues against the "pessimistic" dictum that the people and works of the late Middle Ages were primarily concerned with the transience of life, the dominant approach on this subject…

Collection of essays in French and English that examine factual and fictive female pilgrims, focusing on their representation in spiritual and courtly literature. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Femmes et pèlerinages under…

A festschrift for Paul Szarmach, celebrating the internationalization of medieval studies. Twelve essays by various authors, on topics ranging from Old and Middle English language and literature to the Narnia Chronicles of C. S. Lewis and the Mayan…

Argues that a "turn to the Middle Ages" can reinvigorate feminist criticism, encouraging exploration of the "origins of gendered language," e.g., womanhood, femininity, and wifehood. Williams surveys the tradition of feminist approaches to medieval…

Discusses female presence and company on pilgrimage routes, examining women's destinations and motivations compared to those of men.

A number of the most famous fourteenth-century poets used pilgrimage as a genre to promote the use of vernacular language. Morrison's essay considers pilgrimage, gender, and use of the vernacular, raising questions about intertextual anxiety and the…

Cast as a dialogue between Chaucer and Nohara, the article reconsiders the discrepancy between "nyne and twenty" (GP 24) and the number of pilgrims in CT.

In MilT, Alison resists Absolon's efforts to compel her to perform courtly behavior and chooses her "own predicates" of behavior, thus establishing her identity and coercing Absolon to abandon his failed courtly role.

White explores the role of literature in "peace studies," traces pacifist theory through the ages, and surveys pacifism in English literature from the Middle Ages to modern prose, poetry, and film. The chapter on the Middle Ages comments on Old…

Explores the semantic range of "hende" and of "sely" in MilT and examines efforts to translate the words in various modernizations, particularly those of the eighteenth century.

Argues that Griselda's "restraint" is a subversive strategy and explores the implications of this subversion for understanding the Clerk as narrator and Chaucer as poet.

Carlson examines motifs of shame and covering in the two disrobing scenes in ClT, arguing that Griselda's request for a smock to cover herself before she leaves Walter indicates that she has "shown a self that cannot be shamed by Walter, by poverty…

The exemplary value of FrT is rendered complex by its setting within the Canterbury fiction and by the angered antagonism between Friar and Summoner. Chaucer places the story "in a human situation . . . to engage our understanding of the way in which…

In PrT, uncanniness and the eventual wounding of the clergeon are necessary to render the clergeon holy and Christlike. His experience is close to that represented in miracle plays exploring the Slaughter of the Innocents.

Compares Chaucer's PrT with Alfonso X's "Cantigas de Santa Maria" (no. 6),analyzing them in detail (from plot to prosody), and providing parallel editions of the two texts. In Spanish.

The authors present statistical summaries of complex predicates in Astr and Equat and hypothesize about why such scientific texts contain a relatively low percentage of these predicates.

Compares the dream of Chauntecleer in NPT with the dreams of the roosters in "Roman de Renart" and "Reinart Fuchs." In Spanish.

Explores "reading habits" in fifteenth-century England and the extent to which they are part of the humanist movement, examining how manuscript glossing, responses, and other forms of commentary reflect philological, stylistic, and political…