Browse Items (16346 total)

Explores individuality in visual and verbal portraiture, arguing that facial expressions or movements in art--i.e., "the extent to which a given image evokes or represents movement"--are the basis of perceptions of individuality in portraits.…

Contemplates relations among time, seriality, causality, movement, and dancing, exploring the experiences of moving through Robert Smithson's monumental contemporary sculpture "Spiral Jetty" and watching a film of the experience as analogues to the…

Includes an introduction by the editors and ten essays by various authors that "aim to rethink the relationship between form and the literary" in a variety of Middle English works. For two essays pertaining to Chaucer, search for The Medieval…

Explores the rational power of prose and the affective power of poetry to effect ethical transformation in Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy," linking the work's prosimetric alteration with its theme of providential causation, and arguing that…

Explores words and nuances associated with tragedy in Chaucer's works, describing a pair of emphases in Bo that may indicate direct study of Boethius's original rather than glosses or commentaries. Considers the extent to which the Monk may have…

Identifies Chaucer's "cosmological additions" to Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" when translating it as "Boece," identifying the sources of these additions in earlier translations and commentaries, and speculating that Chaucer includes glosses…

Twelve essays by various authors and an introduction by the editors consider the range and depth of impact of Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" on Old and Middle English literature and thought. The introduction summarizes the legacy of the…

Assesses Chaucer's "enticing eroticism and provocative perversity" as "clear and vital signs of premodern pornography." Historicizes terms such as "obscene," "pornographic," and "erotic," and proposes "Chauceroticism" to describe the various ways the…

Ponders the complications and implications of discussing rape in modern classroom considerations of WBT, and recommends using the BBC television version of the tale to help raise and confront its inherent questions and values.

Identifies contradictions and complications in legal and ethical understandings of rape, and describes how issues of consent and culpability can be used productively in classroom discussion of RvT to help students understand their own values as well…

Maintains that attention to speech and silence is crucial to literary analysis and to understanding medieval notions of gender difference, exemplifying how the speech/silence binary can be explored in complex ways to help analyze rape as a plot…

Includes thirteen essays by various authors and an introduction by the editor, all focusing on teaching medieval narratives that involve rape, attempted rape, or false accusation while attending to twenty-first-century awareness of rape, sexual…

Considers tragedy from the perspective of analytical philosophy, arguing "that tragic literature seeks to offer moral and linguistic redress (compensation) for suffering'; it "involves the balancing of a protagonist's suffering with guilt (and vice…

Examines connection between "language and cultural identity" and claims that Chaucer mocks "Alexander's 'storie' as 'commune' "in MkT. Analyzes how Latin, French, and English Alexander narratives were read, and rewritten, in medieval literature…

Questions the assumptions underlying critical commentary on the Wife of Bath's deafness, exploring potential parallels between authority and experience, literacy and orality, and hearing and deafness. Indicts the "audism" of much of the commentary,…

Draws on modern media studies to clarify practices of "participatory reading" in late medieval England, exploring how vernacular authors, texts, and manuscripts elicit and/or limit the agency of their readers who engage with texts in making meaning,…

Explores "links between gender ideology and money in the late Middle Ages," arguing that Chaucer's "depiction of his purse as a faithless female lover" in Purse reflects the "cultural imaginary around money before the emergence of
political…

Considers relations between PardPT and the Museum of London's carved wooden panel that depicts details of the tale. Calculates the "absurdity of the hoard" in the tale, and explores possible responses of the "London economic elite" to the differing…

Examines relations between theology and economics in FrPT and SumPT (with glances at WBP and PardPT), focusing on the polysemous implications of debt, and suggesting that these tales are "key source texts" for modern "economic theology" (Weber to…

Coins the phrase "liminal transactionalism" to characterize the late medieval combination of gift-exchange and commercial economies, arguing that a similar combination extends forward to Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," challenging traditional…

Ten essays by various authors and an introduction by the editors. "Introduction: 'Greet prees at Market'-- Money Matters in Medieval English Literature" comments on recent critical interest in the social and political aspects of late medieval…

Contemplates the concept of "of a 'medieval Mexico' as a historically significant paradigm" in light of the nation's colonial past. Considers various translations of CT into Spanish and comments on Chaucer studies in Mexico, including the lack of…

Describes factors involved in English language spatio-temporal systems, i.e., the uses of pronouns, demonstratives, adverbs, verb tenses, and modals that indicate proximity and distance between speakers in space and time. Draws evidence from Astr and…

Describes similarities between medieval and modern uses of obscenity to establish homosocial identity and assert power, using evidence from CT manuscripts to clarify the "sexually explicit status" of the late medieval verb "swyven."

Exemplifies the "Scandinavian influence" on Middle English, offering morphological, syntactical, and lexical samples of this influence on CT.