Browse Items (16470 total)

Explores wordplay involving French and Anglo-Norman "bords" that may have authorized the use of the borders of medieval illuminated manuscripts for visual jesting, contestation, and derision. Considers the verbal "borders" of CT in relation to this…

The liturgy is omnipresent in the texts of medieval writers, including lay writers, although its influence is often indirect.

Challenges assumptions underlying traditional studies of sources and relative chronology, suggesting that similarities between Deschamps's work and Chaucer's are evidence of late-fourteenth-century literary style and common "mentalites". Compares…

Friar Hubert practices false-seeming by faking a Francophone lisp, replacing dentals with sibilants in order to increase his social prestige and his seductiveness. Kendrick also explores why Parision French was considered "sweet".

Explores the metaphoric and symbolic value of walls and gaps in the Thisbe account in LGW.

Assesses similarities and differences between the two Prologues to LGW and the portrayal of Cupid in the Dido account, examining the power relations between Cupid and Alceste and, beyond this microstructure, the masculine-feminine relations of the…

Chaucer and Malory haunted the imagination of Burne-Jones, who illustrated the Kelmscott edition of Chaucer's Works (1896). Burne-Jones ignored the licentious tales, but he expressed the classical/medieval spirit of TC. He was attracted by the scene…

Examines medieval English widows. While Old English literature shows a general lack of interest in marriage and widowhood, Middle English literature is rich in various forms of testimonies. None of the widows surveyed shows true sorrow after the…

Surveys overt and covert links and references to Spain in CT.

Kendrick explores the transgressive use of the balade for non-courtly discourse on sex and women in the period just before Chaucer and Deschamps.

By representing the narrator of CT first as a disembodied authority and then as a storyteller in the pilgrimage game, Chaucer explores the parameters of voice, gender, and authority. The perception of gender in speech is shown to be a social…

Assesses Brian Helgeland's movie "A Knight's Tale" (2001), including its allusions to KnT and its inclusion of Chaucer as a character.

Examines the origins of the "nouvelle: in "news" and Chaucer's interest in tydynges.

Examines the evolution of "also" from a marker of comparison in Old English to a marker of addition in Middle English.

Explores the architectural features of HF, particularly in relation to memory, allegory, and the function of the grotesque.

Explores connections between text and places (landscapes, architecture, textual architecture) in KnT, focusing on Theseus's efforts to organize space and events and on the narrative's introduction of original motifs and discrepancies.

Examines the interweaving of tenses and time sequences in the boxed-in structure of the narrative in BD.

Considers the nature, function,and value of the incipits and proems in TC. In French

Comparing Chaucer's and that of Peter Ackroyd in "The Clerkenwell Tales," Blandeau shows Ackroyd's indebtedness to Chaucer's use of images and sense of detail.

Considers Chaucer criticism rather than praise of the Knight in CT.

Explores implications of the fact that the pilgrims never arrive at their destination in CT, commenting on late medieval travel and pilgrimage.

Explores testing in Chaucer's narratives, focusing on uses of the word "assay."

Analyzes the Wife of Bath's "deceptive nature of fine outward show," in terms of her dress and clothing, as opposed to her inner purity in WBT.

Explores the notion of commitment in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and briefly mentions MilT in relation to the several meanings of the term "hend(e)."

Williams examines historical and cultural links between England and Portugal during the Middle Ages as well as circumstantial links between Chaucer and Fr. Hermenegildo de Tancos, author of "Orto do esposo," speculating on similarities between PardT…