Browse Items (16479 total)

Examines allusions to the Virgin Mary in connection to five literary characters: Chaucer's Constance and Wife of Bath, the medical woman of the English "Trotula," Saint Margaret of Antioch, and the "Pearl" maiden. Chapter 1 focuses on parallels…

Whitehead describes the complex significations of architectural structures in medieval thought and memory, examining Christian and classical roots of such thinking. Discusses classical, scriptural, and exegetical commentaries on concrete figures…

Studies the history of interpretation of BD, surveying scholarly commentary, material transmission, and late medieval/early modern creative reception. Emphasizes the (re)making of BD over time, by means of the interrelated textual processes of…

Edits "Le Bone Florence of Rome," accompanied by a facing-page translation that maintains the twelve-line, tail-rhyme stanzas of the original, with end-of-text explanatory notes, textual notes, and several appendices. Introduction includes commentary…

Explores the "gift economy" and commercial culture of CT, and applies gift theory and economic anthropology to medieval literary criticism. Examines "gender of the gift," exchange of women, and gifts in GP. Chapter 6 focuses on the Franklin's gifts…

Collection of essays focusing on Chaucer's engagement with "Italian tradition" and his use and interpretation of Italian sources. For eight individual essays, search for Chaucer and Italian Culture under Alternative Title.

Explores how Chaucer uses the "temporality of poetic form to explore the ethics of time" in CT, BD, and TC. Connects Chaucer's poetic techniques to broader philosophical and ethical discourses of Augustine and Boethius.

Explores the different attitudes toward the Middle Ages presented in science fiction and fantasy literature, while also arguing for a new subgenre called "catapunk" that depicts the Middle Ages in fuller ways. Mentions the false alchemy in CYT,…

Argues for a consideration of texts as "science fiction," even if they were produced before the Enlightenment, and further defines the genre to include any text that combines interests in science and fiction. Includes comparison of CYT to Shelley's…

Defines medieval science fiction and provides a survey of types of science appearing in medieval literature, including natural philosophy (in NPT and PF), alchemy (in CYT), herb lore (in GP), and astronomy.

Surveys Chaucer's works and their reception, emphasizing his innovation and experimentation. Introduced by a brief section on Chaucer's reading, discussions of each of his major works summarize the sources Chaucer used and his adaptations of them.

Argues that an "individual's knowledge of history" is presented in HF in a way that is metaphorically linked to alchemical transformation--with "tydynges" either substantially transformed or flying into uncontrollable energy. CYT shows Chaucer's…

Viewed in light of A Midsummer Night's Dream, KnT is "more comic" than traditionally assumed; its cyclic pattern of "proliferating catastrophes becomes humorous."

Reconstructs a career for the Knight, based on the GP description and details from KnT, MkT, and historical sources. Maintains that Chaucer had met the Knight, perhaps in France, and that the Knight was some fifteen years younger than usually…

Compares ClT with Boccaccio's tale of Griselda and the version by Juan de Timoneda, showing that Chaucer makes more extensive, more explicit, and more radical the class politics of the narrative, critiquing traditional assumptions about marriage and…

Everhart considers Chaucer's translation strategies in Bo and identifies his unusual one-to-one substitution of "hap" for Latin "casus" in that work. Multiple connotations of "hap" in TC imply a different, playful rhetoric of translation that in turn…

Explores how the character Theseus in KnT does and does not embody principles of political philosophy found in Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy." Combining "idealism and political exigency," Theseus fulfills the "composite model of an ideal"…

Reads Form Age as a "document of hope"; its lamentation of present ills recalls the Golden Age of the past but does so to provide a blueprint for a perfect and enduring future.

In mood and details, Form Age and For enable us to see Chaucer's pessimistic attitudes toward "Boethian concerns." Truth, Gent, and Sted also emphasize the wretchedness of the present world rather than recognition of divine order and the consolation…

Reads TC as a critique of the Augustinian Christian view of providential historical teleology.

MkT reflects Boethian epistemology and demonstrates the limits of human reason. The Monk presents Fortune as in Books 1 and 2 of the "Consolation," but he lacks the faith necessary to understand the divine, while the mocking Knight and Host…

Publishes "for the first time a full transcription of an anonymous Middle English translation of Book I of the "Consolation of Philosophy" which is held by the Bodleian Library of Oxford University and catalogued as MS AUCT. F.3.5," drawing the title…

Explores the late medieval traditions of the Wild Man and idealized primitivism, arguing that they are useful in understanding and interpreting Chaucer's additions to the Boethian materials in Form Age.

Reinforces Mark Liddell's argument ("The Academy," March, 1896, n.p.) that "The Boke of Coumfort" (MS Bodley Auct F.33.5) depended upon Chaucer's translation of Boethius in Bo, showing that it adds material from the Latin commentary tradition.…

Argues that Chaucer anticipates readings of Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" as centrally devotional rather than philosophical. Chaucer's word choices in Bo bring this emphasis to the fore, especially of the concluding lines of the work.…