Browse Items (16472 total)

Seeks to understand BD as an exploration of (male) grief beyond its presumed historical occasion and to relate the subject and structure of the poem by explicating the recurring references to literal and metaphorical nakedness--especially that of…

Assesses the cock-and-fox fable in Lydgate's "Isopes Fabules" and his "The Churl and the Bird" as public poetry, exploring how underlying concerns with authority and translation link with his "conscious concern with social conditions and with his…

Links the characterizations of Nicholas and John in MilT to the genre fluidity of medieval literature and the interdependence of reading and performance. Focuses on Nicholas's "hyperliterate status," the "theatrical props of his learning implements,"…

Assesses several aspects of the "ballade" in LGWP to argue that the differences between the F and G versions of the interpolated poem (itself composed as a standalone lyric) indicate that the F version predates the G.

This account of German-speaking Chaucer philology in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries challenges recent accusations that philology is responsible for the backward state of medieval studies. Different phases of Chaucer study are consistent…

Describes how Mary Haweis's 1877 publication of "Chaucer for Children: A Golden Key" brought Chaucer's stories to the domestic realm of women and children as a tool for organization and education. Connolly suggests that Haweis authored later books…

Focusing on the role of Hermiene Ulrich in formulating the modern language curriculum at Queensland in 1911, D'Arcens notes the "frustrating" historical pattern of exclusion of women scholars from medieval studies, particularly Chaucer studies.

Clarifies Edith Rickert's role in her collaborative work with John Matthews Manly--i.e., "Chaucer Life-Records" and "Text of the 'Canterbury Tales'"--arguing that people need to study the background of Rickert to see her as an important female…

Dor examines Caroline Spurgeon's impact on England's postwar reconstruction of the education system through the reestablishment of English studies and her involvement in founding the International Federation of University Women, which protected and…

Reads the opposition between the Clerk and the Wife of Bath in light of Derrida's opposition between the structuralist desire to decipher signs and the poststructuralist impulse to play with the "instability of signs." The Wife is an "anachronistic…

A discussion of the characterizations of Troilus and Criseyde by investigating the meanings of adjectives attached to each noun illustrating their natures. Troilus, who languishes for love, is represented as a strong, faithful, idealistic knight and…

Connotations of proverbs depend on their contexts--addresser, addressee, situation, purpose, etc. Chaucer's maturity in art is particularly discernible in his "misapplication" of them. This deviant use provides him with ample linguistic resources…

Discusses disharmony between the characters' words and deeds in GP by examining Chaucer's similes and metaphors.

Defines the late-medieval idea of a "gentilwoman," its evolution, its relation to male gentility, and its representations in medieval art and literature. Briefly considers Chaucer's Prioress as a depiction of the "behavioural traits" of a medieval…

HF 782-834 displays an uncanny foreknowlege of details of the modern theory of sound and wave motion, especially in lines 809-13, where, in a great creative leap of scientific imagination, the motion of water waves is transferred to the propagation…

Almost all studies of Middle English language and style are flawed in method or lacking in comprehensiveness. The reaction of the medieval audience to dialectal differences is hard to gauge; e.g., sociolinguistic implications of the Northern dialect…

Chaucer's "multiplicity of competing voices" has encouraged modern critics to focus on his "openness." Strohm examines reader reception of Chaucer in contemporaries and followers: Clanvowe, Scogan, Lydgate, and Henryson. Clanvowe, like Chaucer,…

Chaucer had a rare sense of genre for a medieval writer. Not only was he "one of a small number of generic innovators," but he also reinterpreted and practiced genres and had a "following of practitioners." Kelly surveys Chaucer's use of genre…

Refashions the Neo-Platonic "Timaean" aesthetic proposed by Jordan (Cambridge, 1967), focusing on the painting imagery used by Alain de Lille in his discussion of the creative acts of God, Nature, and writers. Despite Jordan's claims for the…

The narrator's fidelity and infidelity to sources are a major theme of TC, reflecting a tradition of translation theory and practice that extends back to Horace and is heavily influenced by Boethius.

Reads HF as an index to English literary culture of the late fourteenth century--as Chaucer's "idea of fourteenth-century literature." The variety of genres of the work, its complex relations with literary traditions, its concerns with science and…

Examines arithmetic aspects of Chaucer's poetry in an effort to understand the mind of the man. The arithmetic devices of RvT, ShT, SumT, etc. indicate the strong vein of "modernistic rationalism" in Chaucer, a distinctive feature of his mentality.

Demonstrates that "the parent-child relation is one of the central motifs" of CT. Focusses on MkT, MLT, PrT, PhyT, and ClT to argue that Chaucer explores not only the power relations between parent and child but those parallel relations as well…

Explores relations between literary inheritance and father-child relations in Chaucer's works. Chaucer's "unfavourable attitude toward the power of the father" is reflected in his plots and his attitudes toward his literary ancestry. Of Chaucer's…

Characterizes the nature and conventions of Middle English lyrics, looking briefly at representative examples. Includes discussion of Chaucer as both a representative lyricist and one who breaks boundaries in his short poems.