Browse Items (16472 total)

Investigates how medieval romances have shaped heterosexual gender roles, studying the role of language in constructing sexuality. In close readings of TC, MilT, and MerT, Sylvester analyzes "transitivity" and maps dialogue between male and female…

Stanbury describes late medieval English attitudes toward images, icons, and devotion, exploring how the tensions among these attitudes are represented in art and literature. Reformist distrust of images co-existed with newly intensified devotional…

Sisk contends that a number of late medieval works, including Fragment 8 of CT, "obliquely" address contemporary religious issues. These works mark a departure from more traditional (and clearly didactic) religious treatises and may even suggest that…

Summarizes Aristotelian affiliations of women with matter (rather than form) and, following Bourdieu, explores how this affiliation and its "practices" are enacted in Middle English literature. Chaucer engages "contemporary historical practices about…

Surveys pedagogical tools for teaching Chaucer to secondary and undergraduate students, maintaining that "the future looks promising for medieval studies." Includes a summary of studies that address the topic and contrasts practice in the United…

Examines depictions of kingship among the Ricardian poets--Gower, Langland, the Gawain poet, and Chaucer--as reflections of common concerns in a time of turbulence, considering royalty in several of Chaucer's works. In BD, the royal birds are…

The "polyphonic assemblage of voices" in CT "displaces the teleological-topographical narrative" of movement toward the heavenly city of God. The Wife of Bath, the Pardoner, and the Miller, in particular, embody noise and represent the vox populi…

Explores ambiguities of wealth and poverty in CT in light of contemporaneous reality.

Applies the thought of Bernard of Clairvaux to issues of human action and subjection to God and law, as seen in ClT, MLT, KnT, FrT, and PhyT. Argues that a fuller understanding of Chaucer's "religious background" is essential to interpretation of his…

Eleven essays previously published between 1999 and 2004. Includes essays by Fiona Somerset on SumT and on clerical hypocrisy, Colin Wilcockson on GP, Katherine Little on ParsT, Lee Patterson on PrT, Elizabeth Robertson on MLT, Louise M. Bishop on…

Eighteen essays by various authors, with a foreword by David Matthews (pp. x-xiv) and a preface by the editor (pp. xv-xvi). For individual essays, search for "CanterburyTales" Revisited under Alternative Title.

Summarizes Chaucer's life and works, particularly CT, and praises Chaucer's characterizations, use of vernacular English, and depiction of a wide social range and register.

Employs the metaphor of the vegetable to examine a variety of poetic works, emphasizing "metamorphic natural processes, and thus the dissolution of boundaries between states of being." Considers CT as an example, focusing on complicated, entertwined…

Tormey examines metal and metalworking as symbols of economic forces shaping the development of epic form and subject matter. Discusses CT and Dante's "Inferno" as "proto-commercial travel narratives."

Stockton discusses the "critique of cynical reason" in CT as part of a larger psychoanalytical discussion of the role of comedy in the formation of the foundations of civilizations.

Examines the motif of renunciation in CT, ranging from renunciation of poetry (MkT, ParsT, and Ret) to renunciation of music and high-flown rhetoric (ManT), renunciation of curiosity (MilT, CYT), and praiseworthy acts of renunciation (ClT, FranT).…

Morrison constructs a cultural poetics of excrement to suggest that Chaucer's treatment of fecal matter, in both its literal and figurative senses, illustrates the ways that the Middle Ages viewed excrement. This cultural poetics enables the modern…

Discussing the use of relics as a site of "institutional control," Malo argues that in works such as CT, writers "use relics as tools" for affirmation or critique of the Church's position as dispenser of grace and healing.

Uses Chaucer (MilT and the absent Plowman), Hoccleve, Lydgate, and Bishop Reginald Pecock to investigate changing ideas regarding "post-plague labor practice" and the traditional concept of the plowman.

Textbook edition of GP. Includes glosses and discursive notes (at the back of the book) and discussion of approaches to the text: sources and analogues, characterization, assessment of theme and topic, and analysis of poetic technique. Also includes…

Analyzes the "range of discourses" in several GP descriptions, particularly those of the Monk, Friar, Parson, Clerk, Sergeant at Law, and Prioress. In various ways, Chaucer combines estates satire, free indirect discourse, the opinions of the…

Carlin documents the development of public dining in London and Westminster, drawing evidence from, among other sources, GP, "Piers Plowman," and the prologue to Lydgate's "The Siege of Thebes."

Considers friendly and hostile relationships, commenting on GP and TC.

Woods discusses the effect and significance of space and place in seven tales of CT, exploring place as an index of character and space as a site of characteristic potential. In KnT, Theseus and the narrator consider chivalry analogous to nature; in…

Harry Bailly's remarks about his wife Goodelief constitute a community among the husbands along for the pilgrimage; they also call attention to various affiliations of wives in CT, e.g., the Clerk's "archewyves." As outlets for complaints about…