Browse Items (16472 total)

MerT, particularly its marriage encomium, was influenced by exegetical treatments of Eve as "helper," drawn from the Augustinian tradition and from Albertanus of Brescia. Chaucer rewrites these two divergent strands, reverses their interpretations of…

Chaucer may have tapped into traditional knowledge of the Northern god Loki in creating the description of the Pardoner in GP. Links with Loki, who transformed himself into a mare in the Old Norse "Gylfaginning," encourage us to view the Pardoner as…

Chaganti explores the "dialectical interaction between inscription and performance" that underlines the "poetics of enshrinement" in medieval visual art, literature, and discourse on representation. Individual chapters address "Saint Erkenwald," the…

PhyT expresses its narrator's concern with "fiduciary" ethics and asserts the principle that "responsible professionals abjure exploitation." Such concerns are part of the late medieval professionalization of medical practice, so the Tale is…

Virginius's fatal encounter with his daughter Virginia in PhyT can be seen as an instance of "torture," as Elaine Scarry defines it, the "most extreme" of political situations. In Scarry's terms and from Virginius's perspective,Virginia's existence…

Brief description of PhyT, accompanied by a Middle English version of lines 6.105-276, without notes or glosses.

Chaucer, having established an egalitarian marriage ideal at the beginning of FranT, explores how such an ideal would be tested by real-world circumstances.

A biography of John Hawley that concludes by arguing (pp. 147-55) that Hawley was at the center of a number of satirical allusions in Chaucer's GP description of the Shipman. Chaucer depicts a professional mariner, which Hawley was not, but the…

ShT reflects Chaucer's belief that "the dominance of a husband over his wife is too strict" in traditional marriages. Private games threaten to open out into public scandal.

Stockton reads the Pardoner as a "cynic" in a Marxist context: one who "submit[s] fully to an ideological structure despite knowing better." Contrasts the Pardoner's queerness with his cynicism, asking,"how queer can the Pardoner be when he guards an…

Studies the Pardoner's and Wife of Bath's "deviancy" in light of late medieval theological and academic discourses, particularly the commentaries and summas of the scholastics, Lollard treatises ,and reactions to Lollard writings and trials. Neither…

Pedagogical commentary on PardPT, based on A. C. Spearing's 1965 edition (text not included). McCarthy emphasizes the "gothic" elements of PardPT and summarizes the poem in sections, offering section-by-section commentary, along with sidebar glosses,…

A recognition of the Pardoner as a "parodic relic custodian" calls for a fresh look at his sexuality--relic custodians were to be celibate--and casts into relief the tension in CT between restrictive ecclesiastical power and "lay desire" for access…

PardT shows the polysemous aspects of gluttony as a sin, suggesting that gluttons are similar to heretics, who use the mouth to deny sacred truths. In contrast to the Parson, the Pardoner embodies the idea that "peccata oris" are not confined to…

The Host's retort to the Pardoner at the close of PardT reinforces a connection between the terms and concepts of testicles (false or otherwise) and relics (false or otherwise). A trilingual collection (French, Latin, and English) of terms along with…

A significant Jewish presence echoes in the wide-ranging geographies of PrT (Asia),Th (fairyland), and the Monk's stories of Peter of Spain and Antiochus (Judea). Chaucer evokes a sophisticated awareness of Jewishness that mitigates the Prioress's…

Kendrick considers secular and religious contexts in which the smile of the Prioress may be understood.

The Prioress aligns herself with the widow in her Tale and with the Virgin Mary. Although the clergeon is like Christ in his challenge to Jewish tradition, PrT is concerned with female power as well as with cultural prejudice.

Studies the function of medieval inscribed or letter-shaped jewels and similar objects, referring to Chaucer's Prioress and to TC.

Rice studies late fourteenth-century vernacular prose devotional guides, with attention to their relationship with works by Chaucer and Langland. Wycliffite writings and changes in religious discipline affected notions of how to live the "best life,"…

Purdie explores "how and why" tail-rhyme romance developed in Middle English and defines the "temporal and geographical limits" of the subgenre. The book includes a version of Purdie's "The Implications of Manuscript Layout in Chaucer's Tale of Sir…

Jager contends that medieval English poetry occupied a "hybrid" oral/written cultural space and that the poems "posit an artisanal, poetic masculinity." She uses Th, along with "Piers Plowman," "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," and other works,…

Explores how liturgical training and practice, particularly the interrelated devotional activities of singing and reading, affected literacy in late medieval England. Lay devotional ritual became separated from clerical practice, and definitions of…

Explores anti-Semitism and modern response to PrT in light of recurring concern with humans (the Prioress, Mary, the clergeon, and the Jews) possessed or penetrated by superior beings. Readers are overwhelmed by the desire for "piercing sweetness,"…

Read as symptoms of a "childlike" individual "dealing with a number of psychosexual developmental issues," the Prioress's personal habits and narrative performance register anxiety not only about boundaries of the individual human body but also about…