Browse Items (16346 total)

Strohm calls for renewed sensitivity to historical particularity in the study of literature, especially Chaucer. Such study must acknowledge the limits of modernist empiricist assumptions and maintain deep respect for the past and its mutually…

Commerce in automatons, mechanical contrivances, and other marvels or mirabilia in late-medieval Europe diminished the wonder of such objects and encouraged scepticism. Chaucer's FranT and SqT rationalize the marvels they present in ways that…

Griselda reflects the "ordinary peasant woman" of Chaucer's age. Her anxieties about the burials of her children are similar to concerns found in guild records; both ClT and the guild records indicate late-medieval interconnections among poverty,…

ParsPT and the GP description of the Parson reflect "concerns over the limits of late-medieval pastoral language." While the GP Parson suggests Wycliffite emphasis on Scripture, one finds a more orthodox view in ParsPT, with its focus on…

Dinshaw considers her autobiographical "queer diasporic experience" as a "pale Indian" in light of the representations of conversion, otherness, and paleness in MLT and the generally unnoticed presence of Indian influences on early English studies.…

Various "titles, epithets, and images" in TC reflect Chaucer's "covert engagement" with political and religious contention. Pandarus and the narrator adopt priestly roles, Troilus is like an anti-Lollard zealot, and forms of address such as "madame"…

Through various alignments of Muslim and Christian characters and transgressions of social and gender boundaries, Chaucer "defamiliarizes" essentialist categories of race, class, gender, and especially religion in MLT. In particular, Chaucer depicts…

Explores ABC as a prayer, especially in its relations with Psalm 118 and 119 and the rosary, and in light of the possibility that it was presented to Duchess Blanche for inclusion in her devotional primer. Quinn confronts several formal features and…

Surveys translations and bowdlerizations of The Canterbury Tales from ca. 1870 to the present, identifying variations on the tendency to present the work as morally regulatory or innocent. Focuses on adaptations by Mary (Mrs. H. R.) Haweis, Charles…

We remain uncertain about the meaning of Cecily Chaumpaigne's release of Chaucer from a charge of rape, but the topic of rape (and forced marriage) in Chaucer's poetry reflects his sensitivity to the complex "definitional problems" of raptus. Chaucer…

Critical response to essays on MkT by Ann W. Astell, Terry Jones, Henry Ansgar Kelly, Stephen Knight, and Richard Neuse.

Critical response to essays on MkT by Ann W. Astell, Terry Jones, Henry Ansgar Kelly, Stephen Knight, and Richard Neuse.

The tragedies of MkT resist any overarching "metahistorical paradigm" and thus reflect Jean-Francois Lyotard's definition of postmodernism. The Monk is a "serious-minded humanist with a bent toward postmodernism."

Chaucer invented the "De casibus" tragedy and assigned his tragedies to the Monk only after he had abandoned his "original serious attitude" toward them. Kelly comments on the place of MkT in Chaucer's sequence of composition.

Triggered by reference to Edward (line 7.1970) as a reminder of the deposition and death of Edward II, MkT is a warning to Richard II.

The narratives of MkT, especially the modern instances, critique the despotism that underlies KnT, provoking the Knight's interruption.

Recurrent concern with lordship in MkT and in the GP sketch of the Monk reveals the Monk's pretense to knightly status, a case of estate transgression.

Explores issues of intertextuality as they relate to textual variance in manuscript culture, summarizing the medieval versions of Alan's "De planctu." Jean de Meun's and Chaucer's depictions of Nature differ from Alan's, despite the critical impulse…

PF engages the same issues as does Trecento commentary on Dante's Divine Comedy, largely matters of interpretation and meaning. Part of this intertextual tradition, PF participates in and comments on the "comedic" nature of literary history, i.e.,…

Assesses aspects of "Regement of Princes" to demonstrate Hoccleve's poetic subtlety, especially the ways he capitalizes on the idea that as a member of the "emergent administrative class," he had "restricted information." Discusses Pandarus of TC as…

Documents the features of ordinatio in the ten "landmark" manuscripts of CT, grouping the patterns as "dense" (Hengwrt/Ellesmere and related manuscripts) and "sparse" (Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 198, and related manuscripts), focusing on the…

Surveys various kinds of spectacle in late-medieval English society, exploring backgrounds of and attitudes toward tournaments, royal processions and entries, civic celebration, and dramas. Assesses Langland's depiction in "Piers Plowman" of the…

Reads BD as a psychoanalytic exploration of the nature of signification in which the dreamer achieves "his own talking cure." Surveys medieval and modern theories of signification, including those of Aristotle, Anselm, Duns Scotus, Ockham, Buridan,…

Argues that the alliterative "Choristers' Lament" is "a sophisticated but hitherto unrecognized response" to Langland's Piers Plowman. Details of the sketch of the Sergeant at Law in GP and the use of "rote" in PrT may indicate that Chaucer conceived…

Continuation of SAC annual annotated bibliography (since 1975); based on contributions from an international bibliographic team, independent research, and MLA Bibliography listings. 309 items, plus listing of reviews for 62 books.