Browse Items (16472 total)

The Introduction is a survey of trends in Chaucer criticism 1964-71. Robertson's 'Preface to Chaucer' and Jordan's 'Chaucer and the Shape of Creation' are found especially influential. The second part is an annotated bibliography of 1218 items,…

Studies "the bibliographic sensibility that characterized late medieval English manuscript culture," analyzing "the dialectical interaction between literary representation and its material support in a selection of late Middle English poems."…

Argues "that conventions of setting, familiar themes or locations which create expectations in the reader about the content of the dream itself, provide a valuable and largely overlooked perspective upon the genre of Chaucerian dream poetry."…

Argues that frame narratives make "language both a represented object and a representing agent" and "thus perfectly mimetic." Following both Dante and Boccaccio in using the device, Chaucer unsettles "easy assignations of identity" for his…

"[I]nvestigates three medieval manuscript collections--compiled in the 14th and 15th centuries in Herefordshire, Derbyshire and East Anglia, respectively--that are significant in their similarly implied female readerships, their thematic treatment of…

Based on "Sara Ahmed's phenomenological theorization of 'orientation'," offers case studies of how "the orientation(s) of medieval readers might have influenced their experience of a text," discussing the experience of reading CT in Wynkyn De Worde's…

Item not seen. Kendall's abstract indicates that the "vision poetry" of both Chaucer and Sir John Clanvowe share "discursive territory" with Gower's "Confessio Amantis," particularly "concepts of the late fourteenth-century aristocratic household and…

Correlates the "twenty-four 'Canterbury Tales'" with the twelve signs of the zodiac, observing two binary oppositions of the zodiacal signs in the "main characters" of each tale as they "symbolize parts of the body in the "astrological medical…

"[E]xplores how understandings of nonhuman animals and the environment shaped which human behaviors were labeled natural prior to the Enlightenment." Includes comments on animals, animal imagery, and environmental idealism in Form Age, MilT, and PF.

Discusses briefly the Wife of Bath's use of mercantile language to help launch an assessment of such language in women's writing from Margery Kempe and the Paston women to Aphra Behn.

"[A]pproaches the Canterbury Tales through the lens of humor theory, responding to a much-noted gap in existing scholarship by focusing primarily on the structures and mechanisms of humor in the text."

Argues that CT is "the source" of Part II of Melville's "Clarel," comparing the behaviors of the characters of the two works for the ways they reflect a "single perspective" among Chaucer's pilgrims and "totally different perspectives" among…

Explores how Marie de France, the 'Orfeo' poet, Thomas Chestre, Chaucer, and John Lydgate "tell stories about the possibilities and problems of vernacular retelling . . . [and] imagine and enact a type of authorship--and a type of authority--based in…

Addresses the "rise of first-person fiction in the later Middle Ages," including discussion of CT, BD, and Chaucer's "other dream poems."

Explores "what constitutes 'life' in hagiographical literature" and medieval life-writing in general, focusing on "philosophical and organic categories of life" rather than "political, social, and ecclesiastic content." Assesses Walter Daniel's "Life…

Offers "senex style" as the a label for an particular network of themes of aging, related rhetorical commonplaces, and narrative poses in a range of late-medieval and early modern works, focusing on those where an "I-persona that extols the wisdom,…

Shows that the "sustained concern about women's agency" in National Library of Scotland, MS Advocates 19.2.1 (Auchinleck) "mirrors" Chaucer's similar concern, and that "the complexity with which Chaucer treats that agency can be found in the…

Assesses Chaucer's and Lydgate's inset lyrics for the ways that they imply "a sense of poetry as an assemblage of physical materials collected from the past, and poets as the collectors and mediators of those materials." Considers aspects of BD;…

Clarifies the "centrality and complexities" of political and ethical law discourse in late medieval England, showing how it is used in works by Thomas Usk and how in TC and KnT Chaucer "questions the view that the natural law is an unshakeable…

Explores how "multiple modes of discourse" about the body--medical, philosophical, religious, and courtly--underlie works by Chaucer, Dunbar, and Henryson, arguing that CT, through its multiplicity of voices, "demonstrates fundamental medieval…

Examines "the creative challenges for memory in a selection of established romances such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Orfeo, Emaré, and King Horn, including those of Chaucer and Malory, along with lesser studied, longer romances such as…

Explores interrelations between literary and logical/mathematical texts in late-fourteenth century England, focusing on how "sophismata" (relatively standardized, imagistic, absurd logical puzzles) underlie late-medieval literary texts. Explains the…

Argues that TC, in its "integration of style, structure, and theme with meaning," is best regarded as "transitionally Renaissance in its entire import." Articulates differences between medieval and Renaissance cultures, and argues that TC better…

Argues that "evolving discourses of gentility . . . served as models" for Chaucer, Sir Thomas Malory, and Henry Medwall, inspiring them "to write, variably, about socio-linguistic reform . . . and meta-literary reflection on the impact of newly…

Describes the "large scale social mobility" of late medieval England and argues that its modifications of traditional estates categories are reflected in CT. Uses Homi Bhabha's "postcolonial concepts of hybridity, in-betweenness, third space and…