Browse Items (16472 total)

Assesses the uses of late Antique historiography in MLT and in Gower's Prologue to his "Confessio Amantis," comparing Gower's depiction of the late Roman empire and that of Otto of Freising's "Chronica," and arguing that the ultimate source of MLT is…

Asks to what extent CT and Boccaccio's "Decameron" advocate "women's equality," exploring female laughter in these works, and focusing on Boccaccio's Pampinea and on the Wife of Bath as a "comic performer who has an intent to play."

Analyzes the grotesque Bahktinian realism of inversions and bodily functions in medieval narratives; includes comments on the "prayer-belch" and farting in SumT and on ass-kissing and farting in MilT, compared and contrasted with analogous materials.

Discusses MerT; Boccaccio's "Decameron," 7.9; and "Sir Orfeo" as "slightly different" varieties of the enchanted-tree motif, emphasizing their structural similarities, their uses of enchantment, and the relative happiness of their endings.

Includes discussion of FranT (pp. 282–93), tabulating historical astronomical data and arguing that Chaucer "used the configuration of the Sun and Moon in December 1340 as the inspiration for the time of year [late December] and for the central…

Argues that in PardT "allegory and form straddle the boundaries of finitude in order to raise the question of how finitude is constituted," thereby sharing or anticipating several concerns and questions raised by object-oriented, materialist…

Maintains that the referent for "my lord" at the end of NPT (7.3445) is Thomas Bradwardine, and identifies parallels between the ending and Bradwardine's "De causa Dei."

Describes and illustrates the "visual arts as a whole" in late medieval England. The index records some twenty references to Chaucer, including a section on HF (pp. 345–48) that shows that "the two largest passages of writing about architecture at…

Investigates how Chaucer, Gower, Langland, Usk, and Hoccleve use confessional discourse to challenge Latinity and "authorize their own literary productions." Includes discussion of the "self-abasing literary self-portrayals as penitents" found in…

Investigates several motifs in the LGW account of Philomela: victimhood, "inappropriate sovereignty," muteness, orality and legal witnessing, "tapestry-as-prosthesis," rape as a property crime, and lack of legal remedy, arguing that Chaucer's tale…

Surveys historical and literary evidence that deer were kept as pets in the Middle Ages, including discussion of deer parks and Nature's garden in PF, which "Chaucer's audience would almost certainly have understood as a deer park."

Argues that the monastic ideal of "contemplative solitude" was an innovative resource in English literature between Richard Rolle and Robert Henryson. Maintains that Chaucer deployed it comically in HF and that, along with notions of Chaucer's…

Discusses inquisition and "examination in the ecclesiastical courts" for the ways that they, like confession, help to disclose the development of interiority as an aspect of medieval selfhood, discussing literary works such as "Dives and Pauper,"…

Twenty-six chapters by various authors, with an Introduction by the editor in which she emphasizes diverse theoretical approaches to Middle English studies and observes that Chaucer's texts "foreground the idea that readers construct texts" (3).…

Argues that "Desire-as-impasse is the human condition" in KnT, exploring how readers' "reading backward" from the end of the tale--seeking to fulfill the "desire for signification"--parallels the efforts of Arcite and Palamon to articulate their own…

Theorizes "public interiorities" in terms of literary voice, Augustinian self-awareness, and Jürgen Habermus's conceptualization of the "public sphere," discussing them as expressions or perceptions of stances or outlooks that are neither universal…

Describes "critical animal studies"; then examines human-animal relations in PrT and NPT, arguing that the Prioress's "selective sympathy for certain animals" in her GP description "forecasts her narrow sympathy for certain humans" in her Tale. NPT,…

Describes classical and medieval concerns with authorial intention and readerly control, commenting on Dante, the "Roman de la Rose," Hoccleve, and Lydgate in particular, and exploring how and where in HF Chaucer "puts in the spotlight the…

Outlines an "ethnography of reading" and describes "audienceship" as a field of study of "how people actually read (and heard) texts," including examples drawn from Chaucer's fiction and its reception. Closes with a brief survey of reading and…

Assesses relations between the "idealizing tendencies" of formalist literary studies and the practicalities of studies in book history, reading PF as a "Chaucerian theory of the book" that is similar to the theory of Maurice Blanchot. Explores how a…

Summarizes traditional historical arguments for the centrality of Chaucer in the formation of the canon of Middle English literature, identifying "identical aesthetic qualities between Chaucer and the modern" as fundamental to this perspective, and…

Considers the value and possible necessity of periodization in history and literary history, focusing on particular difficulties in dealing with the use of "middle" in "Middle Ages" and "Middle English," and arguing that treatments of Chaucer, Gower,…

Describes sovereignty in CT (particularly ParsT) as "a legitimate means of exercising power, distributed hierarchically but founded on the idea of mutual responsibility and equality in the eyes of God." Explores how, in light of this concept,…

Explores Middle English nuances of a set of related concepts: class, estate, identity, calling, and "clayme," investigating them in light of Pauline distinctions between use and possession and between old and new, discussed by Giorgio Agamben.…

Considers cities as a "mode of thought" for critical analysis, describing a walk-through pedestrian perspective and a from-on-high omniscient perspective in late-medieval English works that include "The Stores of the Cities," "St. Erkenwald," and HF,…