Browse Items (16479 total)

Discusses medieval views of feminine beauty as related to Troilus's desire and the "ordinariness of Criseyde."

Primarily discusses medieval humor in Gower, yet addresses how Gower's and Chaucer's humorous characters are female. Looks at Criseyde in TC, Alison in WBT, the merchant's wife in ShT, and Alisoun in MilT.

Reflects on the significance of Brewer's early writings on Chaucer and his importance as a "critic and literary and cultural historian." Discussion of Brewer's exploration of the "Gothic" in connection with CT.

Addresses the importance of storytelling, and the "sheer power of narrative" in CT. In particular, argues that CT is "not an allegory," and that Chaucer plays with time by putting ParsT and Ret at the end, which reinforces the fact that "there is…

Reviews Derek Brewer's editorial work on Malory and Chaucer. Mentions Brewer's unpublished projects, including the "Nelson Chaucer," that affected the "textual authority" of Middle English scholarship.

Analyzes the history of the OED's medieval portion, and emphasizes how Chaucer's "linguistic innovativeness" is shaped by the "substance of OED and MED quotations and definitions." Includes extensive appendix of OED's record of vocabulary in BD.

Explores the history and iconography of Venus and focuses on the theme of Venus in KnT, PF, and TC. Also maintains that "medieval Venus" stories greatly impacted Derek Brewer's writing and scholarly interests.

Analyzes Brewer's interpretations of the figure of the Knight in GP and KnT.

Explores how Chaucer plays with the theme of time in TC.

Focuses on how Troilus's "disciplined imagination" can be viewed through an understanding of "rhetoric's ancient connection with moral philosophy."

Provides a landscape of medieval courtly love, particularly within the French tradition, and evaluates how Chaucer explores intricacies of love in TC.

Medieval habits of reading characteristically produce "a voicing and an inscription of that voicing" (123), allowing for a fluidity of margin and text, reader and author. Geffrey's position as author and glossed text in LGWP and the Wife's position…

Medieval rhetorical textbooks and school commentaries illuminate Chaucer's attention to literal meaning. Discussions of such devices as amplification and abbreviation help explain interrelations and conflicts between poetical structures and…

Medieval commentaries on the confusion of language introduced through the Tower of Babel (Genesis 10-11) illuminate the motif of linguistic disintegration that runs through SNT, CYT, and ManT. The associations of Nimrod with pride, magic, fire, and…

John of Cornwall's "Speculum grammaticale" uses English as well as Latin sentences for examples, and such vernacular pedagogy seems to have been widely established by late fourteenth century. The unidiomatic phrase "conservatyf the soun" (HF 847)…

Manuscript rubrics variously identify the genre of Petrarch's story as "mythologia," "fabula," and "historia" (perhaps the least constricting choice). Some rubrics emphasize Griselda's wifely virtues of obedience and fidelity, while others single…

Various practices of writing and formatting texts clarify how authors imagined writing and how readers received vernacular texts. Using models from cultural studies, editorial theory, semiotics, and traditions of medieval commentary, Irvine argues…

The Jungian notion of synchronicity--the significant coincidence of psychological and physical states--helps one understand medieval notions of astrology, mysticism, and the supernatural. Wolfe comments on the meeting of Palamon and Arcite in KnT,…

Herold reads WBT as an "individuation myth" in which the knight gains "wisdom and self-empowerment" in his encounters with the anima, manifested in the "triple-aspect of the Great Mother Archetype": maiden, queen, and loathly lady.

Machan identifies and defines specific cultural and textual factors particular to Middle English works. He argues that textual criticism, in its evolutionary approach, is consonant with source-and-analogue criticism. Today's standard texts develop…

Chaucer's use of Boccaccio's "Il Filostrato" as a source for his TC demonstrates three major kinds of creative "translacioun": innovative translation of specific words/phrases and lines, brief additions of phrases and lines, and the interpolation…

Focuses on qualities that distinguish CT from the "Decameron:" the self-deprecating Chaucer persona, Chaucer's concern with human individuality, his willingness to admit the limitations of language and art, and his use of irony.

Although Chaucer's version of the Griselda story closely follows that of Petrarch, ClT makes the marquis less sympathetic and Griselda more so.

Discusses the friar, comparing Chaucer's anticlericalism to Boccaccio's in the "Decameron."

English culture was shaped by widespread literacy, English nationalism and political unity, a common language and traditions, schools, study of Latin, biblical commentary, knowledge of the classics, the humanistic movement, travel, and foreign…