Browse Items (16364 total)

Considers friendly and hostile relationships, commenting on GP and TC.

Describes the major social institutions and social practices of late-medieval England, identifying their roots, indicating their later developments, and illustrating their features from Middle English literary sources, especially the works of…

Exemplifies a variety of "inconsistencies and discontinuities" in Chaucer's works, particularly CT, presenting them as typical of the poet's "Gothic" aesthetics and consistent with contemporaneous art and the "complex cultural pluralism" of his age,"…

Brewer comments on his professional visits to Japan, on similarities between Japanese and European medieval cultures, and on promises, honor, and irony in Chaucer's poetry, especially KnT.

Encyclopedia entry that surveys Chaucer's life, language, and works chronologically.

Evokes the social and cultural conditions of England during Chaucer's lifetime by describing historical events, political circumstances, court life, domestic conditions for all classes, child-rearing, education and literacy, the influence of…

Study guide to MilT that includes a plot synopsis, running commentary, and glosses (text not included). Also includes descriptions of characters and characterization, various themes and devices, stylistic features, and suggestions for further study;…

Summary description of Chaucer's life and social contexts, accompanying by appreciative analyses of each of his major works, especially the CT (each tale summarized and described). Also includes discussion of Chaucer's genres, his uses of rhetoric,…

The clash of realist Thomistic Christianity (Dante) and nominalism (Ockham) provides the basis of Chaucer's exuberant satire on philosophy, linguistics, classical tradition, the state of the Church, and other late-fourteenth-century issues. HF…

Defines parody and surveys "all of the major literary parodies in Middle English, Old French, and Middle German," including "three little-known anti-courtly parodies by Hermann von Sachsenheim and Geoffrey Chaucer." Includes comments on ManT.

In PF, BD, and HF, descriptions of mural paintings serve a common function: Chaucer endows the visual artifact with the status of a narrative fiction.

Despite the usual closure of the dream-vision form (as in Pearl), some dream visions are open-ended or exhibit surprising or disappointing closure. HF, usually considered unfinished, exhibits features of closure.

Describes the tradition of the rhetorical topos of the abandoned lover's apostrophe to the bed, considering the "gendered" fetishism of Ariadne's address in LGW, the description of Alceste in LGWP, Troilus's address to the empty house in TC, and Dido…

Examines connection between "language and cultural identity" and claims that Chaucer mocks "Alexander's 'storie' as 'commune' "in MkT. Analyzes how Latin, French, and English Alexander narratives were read, and rewritten, in medieval literature…

Assesses the "depiction of women as ethical signifiers" in Chaucer's and Gower's writings, summarizing the "multilingual and transnational networks on which both poets draw," exploring the "ethical valences" of gender (especially feminine) in their…

Presents a variety of historical contexts for Chaucer's characterization of the Clerk, discussing medieval universities, manuscripts from fourteenth-century Oxford, and the role of clerks in medieval society. Includes appendices of "Manuscripts…

MilT develops the theme of "pryvetee," which in Chaucer refers to both human genitalia and divine secrets. Echoes of Exodus and its tradition of commentary reinforce the theme and enable Chaucer to suggest an orientation of the "Tale" as a…

Briggs describes Shakespeare's "emendation and expansion" of his medieval sources in "Troilus and Cressida" and "The Two Noble Kinsmen," assessing the importance of KnT and TC in Shakespearian work. Also explores how the various medieval influences…

Challenges the traditional "misleading" explanation of a Chaucer life-record, particularly the uses of the name Malin/a, reopening "the question of the Malin branch of Chaucer's ancestry." Observes that the name is used in RvT

References to "Lameth" in WBT and SqT comprise links in a sturdy chain connecting the tragic actions of Shakespeare's prince of Denmark to Lamech, a "(pseudo-)biblical figure associated with murder, rage, and vengeance."

Latin and French antifraternal works preceded English ones, which display a distinctive treaatment of friars as peddlars,as in Chaucer's SumT. In the Renaissance, antifraternal writing gradually disappeared from Britain, along with the friars.

This Bakhtinian discussion of KnT argues that the "flaws" perceived by earlier critics result from misguided efforts at finding homogeneity in the poem. As a product of a complex literary culture, KnT reflects the culture's "heteroglossia" and…

Demonstrates the "stylistic virtuosity" of NPT, consistent with its "multiple perspective," commenting on the plain style of the widow frame, "cinematic" details in descriptions, the quality and comedy of direct dialogue, the "graver rhetoric of the…

Audio recording of hip-hop performance of adaptations of GP (cast as a bus trip), KnT, MilPT, PardPT, WBPT, and Ret (with additional tracks: "Rhyme Renaissance Prologue," "Rhyme Renaissance," and "Dead Poets"). Affiliated website at .

Facing-page adaptations of KnT (abridged), MilT, PardT, and WBT, with Middle English and lyrics designed for rap performance. The Middle English text is glossed, and each Tale is accompanied by a brief introduction to the plot. Brinkman's…