Sociohistorical commentary on the rise of prestige markers in English writing and speech, focusing on accent as a marker in Chaucer's time and soon after, in particular the pronunciation of final -e, the Great Vowel Shift, and northern dialect…
Smith, Jeremy J.
Derek Pearsall, ed. Manuscripts and Readers in Fifteenth-Century England: The Literary Implications of Manuscript Study (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1983), pp. 104-12.
Demonstrates how specific linguistic features can be used to disclose "scribal attitudes to the text being copied," using as a primary example a number of linguistic forms from "one of the most notorious manuscripts" of CT, British Library MS Harley…
Smith, Jeremy J.
English Studies 93 (2012): 593-603
Discusses Chaucer's use of "this" (e.g., "this carpenter," "this sely man," etc.). Replaces its usual explanation as a colloquialism with a discussion of the changing meaning of demonstrative "this"/"that" from Old English onward and applies this to…
Smith, Jeremy J.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
Historical-pragmatic analysis of the formal features of texts in manuscript and in print (e.g., punctuation, spelling, capitalization, script, font, etc.) in relation to the texts' "socio-cultural" functions--linguistic, aesthetic, ethical,…
Smith, Jeremy J.
London and New York: Routledge, 1999.
Introduces Old English, Middle English, and Early Modern English, describing developments in syntax, morphology, pronunciation, lexicon, and dialects. The selection of samples for discussion and assessment includes excerpts from GP, PardT, and ParsT,…
Linking the idea of intention to the moral self in the medieval understanding of the subject, considers TC along with Margery Kempe and "The Testimony of William Thorpe."
Smith, Kathleen.
Jay Paul Gates and Brian O'Camb, eds. Remembering the Medieval Present: Generative Uses of England's re-Conquest Past, 10th to 15th Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 2019), pp. 195-214.
Argues that the rhetorical interjections and repetitions in MLT, read in the context of Trevet's and Gower's versions of the Constance story as "an origin point of English identity," focus attention on questions of myth, literary belief, and…
Smith, Kendra O'Neal.
Dissertation Abstracts International A70.06 (2009): n.p.
Smith posits feminine and masculine modes of the transmission of power and culture from the ancients to the medieval, using "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," the "Alliterative Morte Arthure," and TC to demonstrate the existence of "a feminine means…
Smith, Kirk L.
Literature and Medicine 27 (2008): 61-81.
PhyT expresses its narrator's concern with "fiduciary" ethics and asserts the principle that "responsible professionals abjure exploitation." Such concerns are part of the late medieval professionalization of medical practice, so the Tale is…
Chaucer uses the word "syn" in TC ninety-nine times; the word "sith," thirty-one times. The former not only designates "since," but also reinforces the morality--or lack thereof--in the poem. The final "syn" clause is connected with Christ to…
Smith, Macklin.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 8 (1986): 3-30.
Alison's threat trades on the story of the Woman Taken in Adultery (John 8), on classifications of adultery associated in ParsT with stoning, and on a liturgical setting in Lauds.
Smith, Marcus A. J., and Julian N. Wasserman.
Parentheses: Papers in Medieval Studies 1 (1999): 145-86. [Web publication.]
Considers strategies that have been used to accuse and excuse Chaucer (and others) of prejudice against women, homosexuals, and Jews, suggesting that medieval language theory and Chaucer's awareness of the semiotic gap between sign and signified…
It is commonly held that a large number of Old French loan words in Middle English were literary borrowings. However, a study of a restricted group (designating articles of dress and fabrics) shows that most such words were current before the…
Considers dream visions in the works of Chaucer and his successors (Hoccleve, Lydgate, Skelton, and Spenser), arguing that these dreams break down "binary" notions, including those of body/mind, gender, and text/reader.
Smith, Nathanial B.
Comparative Drama 55 (2021): 234-58.
Shows that Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew" and the anonymous "Taming of a Shrew" feature skeptical parody of Stoic certainty about distinguishing reality from illusion or dream. As in HF, the "framing fictions" of the plays "make a show" of…
Smith, Nathaniel B., and Evan Carton.
PMLA 94 (1979): 948-50.
An exchange of letters in the PMLA Forum section letters that comment on the meaning of "authority" in the Middle Ages, particularly Chaucer's uses of the notion.
Smith, Nicole D.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 28 (2006): 117-40.
The indictment of fashionable male clothing in ParsT (10.422-30, "Superbia") is a "homoerotic moment" reflecting the Parson's own "scopophilic" pleasure, although the "turn to the fashionable female neutralizes any homoerotic tendency."
Smith, Nicole D.
Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012.
Studies clothing in imaginative literature, arguing that writers of romances redirect the negative depictions of the courtly body found in clerical chronicles and penitential writings into positive images that convey virtue. While religious and…
Smith, Nicole D.
Notes and Queries 258 (2013): 498-502.
Echoes of Peraldus's notion of sin as "amor inordinatus" in the section of ParsT on contrition and confession, thought to have been adapted primarily from Pennaforte, suggest that the former's "Summa de vitiis" "exerts a more significant influence on…
Smith, Peter J.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012.
In "Turning the Other Cheek: Scatology and Its Discontents in The Miller's Tale and The Summoner's Tale," pp. 12-59, Smith uses farting in MilT and SumT to explore Chaucer's complex and refined "scatological rhetoric," a trope that has been obscured…
Smith, Peter J., and Greg Walker.
Cahiers Élisabéthains 69 (2006): 53-57.
Smith and Walker review the dramatic performance of CT (all but CYT), describing the staging and tracing the emotional swings of the adaptation. Includes one black-and-white and four color photographs of the production.
Smith, Richard.
Linda Cookson and Bryan Loughrey, ed. Critical Essays on The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale (Harlow: Longman, 1990), pp. 18-28.
Reiterates that all of Chaucer's poetry was written to be read aloud, and argues that PardT in particular "cries out for dramatic reading," identifying its several features that invite performance, including its "showy" rhetoric, its "theatrical"…
Smith, Ryan.
Ph.D. Dissertation. State University of New York at Buffalo, 2021.
Dissertation Abstracts International A82.12(E).
Explores "reductio ad absurdum" in "theology and romance texts of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries," including discussion of Chaucer's uses of it as "a marker of generic resistance to chivalric romance" in KnT and ClT.
Smith, Sarah Stanbury.
Studies in Iconography 9 (1983): 1-12.
Semantic associations, proverbial wisdom, and a coherent visual tradition establish the hood as a symbol of hypocrisy and sexual betrayal; this enriches the comic effect of Miller and Pardoner, of Pandarus and Criseyde.
