In "Ars Amatoria" and "Remedia Amoris," Ovid provides "habits of thought" that give medieval thinkers a vocabulary to describe "the operations of what we would today call ideology," or the conforming of the self to conceive social institutions as…
Dauby, Hélène.
Danielle Buschinger and Arlette Sancery, eds. Mélanges de langue, littérature et civilisation offerts à André Crépin à l'occasion de son quatre-vingtième anniversaire (Amiens: Presses du Centre d'Études Médiévales, Université de Picardie-Jules Verne, 2008), pp. 142-44.
Assesses invocations and formulas used to address divinities, characters,and sources in TC.
D'Agata D'Ottavi, Stefania.
Giovanni Iamartino, Maria Luisa Maggioni, and Roberta Facchinetti, eds. Thou sittest at another boke: English Studies in Honour of Domenico Pezzini (Milan: Polimetrica, 2008), pp. 209-21.
In TC, Troilus's melancholic character and his intense intellectual activity--a topos reminiscent of the first of Pseudo-Aristotle's thirty "problemata" in "Problemata Physica," according to which all men of genius are melancholy--are especially…
Crocker, Holly A., and Tison Pugh.
Tison Pugh and Marcia Smith Marzec,eds. Men and Masculinities in Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008), pp. 82-96.
Troilus's suffering in TC is informed by a "Christian economy" of pain that valorizes a new kind of manhood, one that activates others through its passivity and converts weakness to strength "through a managed display." Troilus's identity "emerges…
Condren, Edward I.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008.
Condren explores similarities of theme and technique in BD, PF, HF and TC, focusing on numerical composition and Chaucer's "self-dialogue" on poetry and love. Biographical reading of BD reveals that the man in black is not Gaunt but the dreamer's…
Mieszkowski, Gretchen.
Tison Pugh and Marcia Smith Marzec, eds. Men and Masculinities in Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008), pp. 43-57.
Mieszkowski surveys masculine lovers in medieval romance, showing that fainting and passive love "acquired feminine gender" only after the fourteenth century. Modern discussions of TC that treat Troilus as "feminized" both mistake his role as an…
Marzec, Marcia Smith.
Tison Pugh and Marcia Smith Marzec, eds. Men and Masculinities in Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008), pp. 58-72.
Marzec surveys portrayals of Hector as a knightly paragon of prowess and virtue in sources and analogues of TC, arguing that Chaucer's Troilus is a distinctly "courtly" figure in contrast to his brother. The contrast critiques courtly love.
Martin, Molly A.
Tison Pugh and Marcia Smith Marzec,eds. Men and Masculinities in Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008), pp. 132-47.
In medieval optical theory of intromission and in medieval romances, gazed-upon objects are understood to be more active than they are in modern theorizing of scopophilia. Tracing interdependencies of the romance genre and the masculine gaze in TC,…
Koppelman, Kate.
Tison Pugh and Marcia Smith Marzec,eds. Men and Masculinities in Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008), pp. 97-114.
Criseyde is the "fullest subjectivity" in TC. Her resistance to Troilus's fantasy demonstrates the "constructed nature of masculinity" as shifting and dependent posturing. Koppelman explores Criseyde's confrontations with the "opaque network" of…
Keller traces the medieval tradition of Troy narratives from Benoît de Saint-Maure and Guido delle Colonne through various Middle English adaptations, including TC. Focuses on the literary interplay of imperial ambition--with its tendency to…
Jensen, Charity.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. "The Canterbury Tales" Revisited--21st Century Interpretations (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008), pp. 281-99.
Although hedged in by bookish tradition, Chaucer "continually stretches the boundaries as he sets himself up as a legitimate auctor." Jensen assesses several of Chaucer's "self-authorising" interventions in the proems of TC, in WBP, and in Ret,…
Sturges, Robert S.
Tison Pugh and Marcia Smith Marzec, eds. Men and Masculinities in Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008), pp. 28-42.
Sturges applies Giorgio Agamben's theory of sovereignty to TC, exploring shifting figures of sovereignty in the poem (the people, parliament, Hector) and measuring the extent to which Troilus and Criseyde live in a "state of exception" (an Agambenian…
Shoaf, R[ichard]. Allen.
Tison Pugh and Marcia Smith Marzec, eds. Men and Masculinities in Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008), pp. 183-94.
Shoaf comments on male separation anxiety in TC and Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida," suggesting that the profundity of the poets' realizations underlies their aesthetic power.
Rosenfeld, Jessica.
Catherine E. Léglu and Stephen J. Milner, eds. The Erotics of Consolation: Desire and Distance in the Late Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 39- 59.
Rosenfeld concentrates on language of lovers and language of clerks ("erotic and intellectual discourses"), arguing that TC affirms the value of earthly happiness during life, as well as the inevitable instability of earthly matters.
Pugh, Tison, and Marcia Smith Marzec, eds.
Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2008.
Twelve essays by various authors on gender construction in TC, with an introduction (pp. 1-8). For individual essays, search for Men and Masculinities under Alternative Title.
Pugh discusses the value of "vectored" writing assignments for undergraduate analyses of "multigeneric" texts, focusing on TC. "Vectored analysis"--defined here as the "examination of a text from at least two converging yet separate…
Paxson, James J.
Tison Pugh and Marcia Smith Marzec, eds. Men and Masculinities in Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008), pp. 73-81.
Troilus's secret entry into Criseyde's bedroom in Pandarus's house alludes to King David's surprise of the Jebusites when conquering their city (2 Samuel 5); it attests to Troilus's masculine heroism and derives in part from Chaucer's experiences…
Modarelli, Michael.
English Studies 89 (2008): 403-14.
Modarelli examines the characterization of Pandarus in TC, particularly the way he acts "with the agency of an author"--one in a "trinity" of authors that includes the narrator and the poet. Using Tzvetan Todorov's formulation of "constructive…
Veck, Sonya.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. "The Canterbury Tales" Revisited--21st Century Interpretations (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008), pp. 300-313.
Veck comments on recurrent thematic opposition between newfangleness and sufficiency or steadfastness in Wom Unc, Truth, and CT. She suggests that Chaucer complicates the opposition with examples in which "a dash of inconstancy or newfangleness would…
Reading Adam as a specimen of the genre of book curses reveals a tension in Adam between the incipient humanist idea of the author, "whose inventions transcend their scribal incarnations," and the reality in late medieval London of authors'…
Despite their empirical basis, the conclusions Linne R. Mooney draws regarding Adam Pinkhurst's relationship to Chaucer ultimately depend on literary evidence, which should remind scholars that while particular communities of readers make a work…
Dor, Juliette.
Frédéric Duval and Fabienne Pomel, eds. Guillaume de Digulleville: Les pèlerinages allégoriques (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2008), pp. 401-23.
Dor compares ABC with its source, revealing that Chaucer's translation is a rewriting that achieves intense dramatic power. Transformations of the figure of Mary ,some shifts in the poem's tone, and ironical remarks invite us to reconsider the poem's…
Zeikowitz, Richard E.
Tison Pugh and Marcia Smith Marzec,eds. Men and Masculinities in Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008), pp. 148-60.
Zeikowitz articulates the "largely unnarrated 'ocular logic' of the exchanges between Troilus and Pandarus" in Book 1 of TC and "teases out the subtle homoeroticism underlying their interaction." The essay focuses on the cinematic technique of…
