Browse Items (16472 total)

Interprets the biblical allusions and references in MerT as Chaucer's invitation to his audience to "consider the ethics of appropriating morally authoritative texts." The narrator, January, and May manipulate textual authority in various ways,…

Regards the Squire as the "son-substitute" of the Franklin, and reads FranT, with a nod to Freud, as a projection of the narrator's idealized and decontextualized attitudes toward money, generosity, gentility, and virtue that reveals a subtle…

Explores the functions and implications of the black rocks in FranT both as a symbol of universal evil and as a narrative device, arguing that the rocks have particularly rich and pervasive significations, anticipating the postmodern device of a…

Argues that the narrator and the characters of FranT pursue an ideal of social harmony based on "trouthe," but they produce a "collective fiction" in which "competing forms of exchange"--marriage, promises, and money--disclose tensions that must…

Explains palindromes and palindromic structures, rooted in classical and exegetical traditions, here exemplified by means of Augustine of Dacia's couplet. Then argues that PardT "features palinodromically arranged characters, settings, and words that…

Compares several late-medieval boy-murder narratives to assess attitudes toward Jews before and after their 1290 expulsion from England. Chaucer's PrT is the "finest aesthetic treatment" of the story in the Middle Ages and, in comparison with other…

Discusses the "framing elements" of Mel, its glosses in the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts (comparing them with those in ParsT), and the codicological contexts of the five fifteenth-century manuscripts of the Tale that exist "outside the story…

Argues that Chaucer's innovations in CT "announce the ulterior evolution of the modern short story," focusing on NPT and WBPT as "unequivocal precursors" to the modern genre in their techniques of representing time, space, characters, and narrators,…

Studies "male bereavement in medieval literature," particularly "the authenticity and affective nature of grief among aristocratic males" in Chretién's "Yvain," "Trewe Man," "Sir Orfeo," "Pearl," and BD. In the latter, Chaucer expresses "not…

Reads the House of Rumor in HF as "an echo object through which we can recover Chaucer's complex and dynamic view of human cognition." Reads the basket-like structure as Chaucer's "uncanny" anticipation of "neuroplasticity," the "capability of the…

In Chinese; item not seen. The subject listings and the notes in the record of the online MLA International Bibliography indicate that the essay treats HF, "Pearl," Lollard writing, and work(s) by George Herbert. The record also indicates that a…

Uses Michel Foucault's notions of power, subversion, and discourse to argue that LGWP "illustrates the medieval writer's relationship to hegemonic power" and "presents the potential ways authors are involved in the production and subversion of…

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.

Suggests how Chaucer may have become familiar with the work of Guido Cavalcanti, and argues that TC records philosophical and poetical perspectives and several poetic devices that are similar to those found in Cavalcanti's "Donna me prega."

Assesses the narrator of TC as a "translator-commentator" of his story, analogous to Chaucer's relation to Boethius's material when producing his Bo. This dynamic enables the narrator to stand apart from the temporality of his plot while…

Inspired by CT and designed for 2-3 players, aged 10 and above. Players are "medieval pardoners who travel the Road to Canterbury tempting Pilgrims with the Seven Deadly Sins--and then pardon these sins for a fee," with the goal of winning the most…

Romps through the western literary canon, including commentary on CT and scoring it a 10 in Importance, 6 in Accessibility, and 9 in Fun; TC rates 4, 3, and 4, respectively. Distinguishes CT from the novel tradition, and summarizes, irreverently,…

A history of the English language that emphasizes sidelights (alphabets, reform movements, etc.) as well as major developments (Old English through Post-Modern English), with a select bibliography, an index, and recurrent attention to literature,…

Explores the "special place at the commanding heights of literary culture" that Boethian translation held in Middle English, surveying the variety of translations and uses of the "Consolation," commenting on the importance of Jean de Meun and…

Argues that Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" alludes to KnT (particularly the figures of Emelye and Arcite) in ways that "perforate the boundaries" of the chronology of Shakespeare's borrowings the from the tale in "Dream" and in "The Two…

A popular history of the George Inn, Southwark, located next to where the Tabard once stood. Includes various references to the Tabard Inn in history and in CT, and includes a chapter called "The Poet's Tale, Or, How English Literature Was Born in a…

Distinguishes between modern views of rocks as mere objects and medieval understanding of their "virtues," agency, and exemplary value, raising questions about objects in nature and in art. Assesses the tale of the cock and the rock in Robert…

Thirty vignettes of London and its citizens arranged chronologically, with nine recommended walking tours and an Index. Chapter 7, "Geoffrey Chaucer is Appointed Comptroller of the Port of London: 8 June, 1374" (pp. 46-51; 4 figs.), briefly describes…

Challenges "the standard view that fifteenth-century poets wrote irregular meters in artless imitation of Chaucer," arguing instead that "Chaucer's followers deliberately misread his meter in order to challenge his authority" and rather than…

Reprints twenty essays on HF published between 1896 and 2006. The introduction by Ludwig (pp. 37-39) summarizes the plot and characters of HF, and comments on its plot and sources, major themes, and critical reception. Includes a selected…