Browse Items (16472 total)

In Gower's version of the Constance story, incest is a metaphor for the relationship between the Church and the crown, a means to critique the two. In contrast, MLT "tries to avoid suggesting any tension between lay and clerical power."

Explores how in KnT ekphrasis (here the "verbal depiction of fictional images rather than of real ones") serves "a specific politics of representation" in which "the verbal and the visual" and "the classical and the medieval" are locked in…

Describes scholarly accomplishments and critical trends in Chaucer studies between 1940 and 1968--editions, source-and-analogue studies, and psychological, theological, and philosophical approaches. Explores the concept of the doubleness in love (two…

A poetic tribute in thirty-six lines that recalls memorizing GP in a tenth-grade English class.

There is a paucity of writing on indulgences in medieval vernacular literatures. Minnis explores depictions of pardoners and indulgences in PardP, Langland's "Piers Plowman, "and John Heywood's "The Foure PP" and "The Pardoner and the Frere."…

Referencing SqT and MLT, maintains that Astr was literally meant for a juvenile audience, adducing its concise language, repetition, exhaustive definitions, and liberal use of adjectival possessives as pedagogical tools fit for young readers. Posits…

Surveys engagement with Dante by writers in English, from Chaucer to Seamus Heaney. Discusses Dantean influence on the Hugelyn section of MkT, and on other portions of CT, HF,Lady, and TC.

Close reading of lines 33-41 (and E. K.'s commentary) of the February eclogue of Spenser's "Shepheardes Calender" exemplifies the "truancy of literary resonance" and discloses resonant intertextual play among the comic variety of HF, the monovocality…

Comments on the interdependence of innovation and imitation in Chaucer's poetry, and explores how Spenser's depictions of Chaucer and his poetry are part of the early modern concern with this dynamic, particularly evident in Luke Shepherd's reformist…

Argues that an "ambivalent enterprise of simultaneous innovation and retrospection . . . structures Spenser's approach to the reform of Ireland" as well as his "engagement with Chaucer in his poetry." Analyzes Spenser's use and explanation of two…

Explores the thematic concern with poetic tradition in the narrator-Africanus exchange of PF and in Spenser's "Mutabilitie Cantos," arguing that Chaucer and Spenser share an "interest in rhetorically linking the earth-bound poet with a community of…

Identifies parallels between Chaucer's and Spenser's depictions of ranges and varieties of love-relationships in PF; TC; CT; and "The Faerie Queene," books III–IV. Introduced via allusion to FranT, Britomart is central to Spenser's collection of…

Argues that the Spenserian stanza "rebuilds Chaucerian rhyme royal" and that it "demands to be read as a form which takes its syntactic impetus more from rhyme royal than elsewhere." Examines aspects of rime riche, "interconnected" rhymes across…

Focuses on elements of the "popular romance" in the manuscripts of "The Tale of Gamelyn" and "The Tale of "Beryn" and excerpts from Chaucer's works in other manuscripts to show how "the 'Chaucer' presented to early modern readers by the manuscript…

Examines E. K.'s commentary on Chaucer in Spenser's "The Shepheardes Calender," arguing that by "associating him with a historically antecedent but culturally current poetic paradigm, E. K. represents Chaucer as a writer who proleptically embraces…

Studies the paratextual materials that accompany and supplement the text of Chaucer's works in Speght's editions of 1598 and 1602, showing that these materials present Chaucer to early modern readers as ancient but still worth reading, in part…

Observes that in sixteenth-century editions of CT, ManT follows NPT, and that after c. 1550 the pair is followed by the story of the Pelican and Griffin from the apocryphal "Plowman's Tale," then the references to fables in ParsP, providing a…

Locates several "clusters" of resonances between TC and Spenser's "Amoretti" and "The Faerie Queene," concentrating on the importance of aurality and memory in recognizing these resonances and distinguishing "resonance" from other metaphors of…

Investigates resonances between the garden settings in FranT and in the June eclogue of Spenser's "Shepheardes Calender," exploring the "spatialised poetics" of Dorigen's and Colin's shared inability to enjoy the pleasures of a classical/Christian…

The Summoner's highly-qualified reference to Sittingbourne does not imply that the pilgrimage has progressed past Rochester. The shift of fragment B2 is not justified.

Though the Pardoner is consummately evil, the Host must be reconciled with him because the former is still a representative of the church. The Host's outburst, though justified, is destructive because to the company the Pardoner is an embodiment of…

Discusses unity in PrP, PrT, and the GP description of the Prioress, focusing on their liturgical references and allusions: the canonical hours, the Prioress's "service dyvyne" (1.122), and the plea for aid from Hugh of Lincoln at the end of the tale…

Explores difficulties of representing in Spanish translation the provincial Northern dialect of John and Aleyn of RvT.

Discusses the idea of the marvelous in the "Gawain"-poet's Arthurian romance and in FranT. Argues that the marvels in FranT are indispensable to the genre, producing the effect described by J. R. R. Tolkien as "eucatastrophe."

Assesses representation of the mothers-in-law in MLT and their equivalent in the BBC adaptation, where the mother-in-law is of Iranian origin, but looks on Custance from a highly racist perspective.