Browse Items (16472 total)

This lesson plan focuses on Chaucer's CT. While initially requiring that students become familiar with Chaucer's rhetorical strategies, it also asks students to use these strategies to compose a "multimodal satire" of their own--one that focuses on…

Introduces CT as the "epitome" of Chaucer's "literary experimentation," commenting on his social range, the unfinished nature of the work, and, especially, its generic variety--"romance, fabliau, beast-fable, saint's life, miracle story, sermon,…

Aligns vernacularity with visual and verbal profanity, observing occurrences in MilPT in which Chaucer "indulges in vernacular eschatology" and "moves to suppress it." Heyworth reads the window scene of MilT in light of medieval guides to…

Tallies the "taboos" broken or flouted by the Miller and characters in MilT.

Commenting on how Baba Brinkman's rap version of MilT "recast and reset" Chaucer's original, Beidler raises questions about the pedagogical and cultural value of the live performance, the audio recording, and the printed version. Includes (pp.…

Stretter comments on various romances and includes discussion of how, in KnT, Palamon and Arcite's mutual love for Emily disrupts their sworn brotherhood, a powerful bond of obligation and friendship. Chaucer alters a long cultural and literary…

Storm surveys the debt to Chaucer's KnT in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," focusing on the works' mutual concern with hierarchy and order. In both works (and elsewhere in the authors' works), the figure of the Minotaur (parodied in…

Reiff examines uses of second-person singular pronouns "thou" and "you" to indicate relationships among characters in KnT, particularly idealized chivalric relationships, Theseus's changing attitude toward the knights, the unfaltering brotherhood…

Analyzes how art--canonical literature, in particular--helps to construct, consolidate, and transmit patriarchal ideologies that support violence and female subjection. Assesses KnT as an example of how a masculine gaze affects female identity.…

Explicitly influenced by KnT, Shakespeare's "Two Noble Kinsmen" adapts Chaucer's humor and creates a dark vision of the intersection of consumerism and sexuality.

Hsy compares the ways MLT and Boccaccio's "Decameron" 5.2 present transnational diversity, especially through their depictions of "littoral language," i.e., Custance's and Gostanza's communications with people on the shores of foreign lands. Both…

Compares the "theatricality of imagery" in MLT, particularly in Constance's prayer to the Virgin (2.841-54), with the Polish Marian crucifixion lament "Listen, Dear Brothers." Includes an English translation of the Polish lyric.

Discusses (pp. 143-88) Chaucer's "great translation experiment" in PrPT, MLT, and SqT, arguing that Chaucer is "highly invested in the mechanics of miraculous and mundane translation" and that Custance is a "medieval example of a xenoglossic holy…

Through its several nested narratorial performances, each of which includes its own disavowals and subtle appropriations of authority, MLT renegotiates the relative power of spiritual and secular domains to control the interpretation and transmission…

Outlines the literary and social contexts in which late medieval English romances were produced. Assesses a number of these romances and their "afterlives," exploring their gender affiliations, uses of symbols, concerns with familial and cultural…

In RvT, Chaucer's references to language, lore, and the North both explore uncanny (in the Freudian sense) political differences among regions and reveal notions of nation. The North or Northernism plays a small but significant role elsewhere in CT,…

In his conduct and dress, the social-climbing Reeve associates himself with the clergy--an association that the Miller recognizes and ridicules unmercifully.

Chaucer's intentional contrasting of the language of the Knight and that of the Miller challenges his readers' openmindedness. The Miller's obscene language is cleverly applied and should on no account be censored from prudishness.

Testing the premise of A. C. Spearing's "Textual Subjectivity" (2005), Klitgård explores the dramatic monologues of the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner and uses of narrative personae.

All of the recensions of the Prologue to "Confessio Amantis"--especially the Ricardian recension--reflect Gower's economic concerns. His Tale of Florent also engages commercial concerns, particularly those of marital contracts, although to a lesser…

Reviews scholarship that discusses analogues of WBT and hypothesizes the nature and date of the archetype of these tales, focusing on the relative chronology of major motifs, shared and unshared. A hypothetical summary of the archetype--presented as…

Argues that racial differentiation--generally associated with the early modern period--was not necessarily secondary to religious distinctions in the late medieval period, using MLT and other texts as evidence.

For Chaucer, Rome is an ancient imperial capital, a goal of medieval pilgrimage, and a center of trade--trade in devotions, indulgences, and pardons that allies mercantilism and religion. Such a Roman transaction also involves relics or monuments,…

The "temporal disorder" and "internationalism" of MLT--combined with its examination of competing familial and institutional loyalty--depict sovereignty as a redemptive governmental form capable of healing the ills of late medieval England, including…

Skilled in the law and both learned and adept in poetry, the Man of Law crafts a tale of sin, free will, and providence. Though Custance is steadfast, her will is free and consequential, the foundation of true judgment. MLT proposes a concept of…