Browse Items (16476 total)

Numerous fourteenth-century documents that address the practice of extortion by institutional "middlemen" point to systemic problems rather than to individual turpitude. FrT reflects this contemporary explanation, albeit without exonerating the…

Chaucer and other writers of the "middle strata" of English society (Gower and Langland) "imagine economic activity" in ways that are much like the views recorded in documentary writing. Such writings by societal, administrative, and governmental…

An eclectic collection of materials related to new-media play that focuses on Chaucer, including the following: a faux poem by "John Gower"; an introduction, by Bonnie Wheeler, to play and parody among medievalists at the conferences of the Medieval…

Argues that RvT reworks its fabliau sources alongside then-contemporary texts about manorial control and operation such as "Walter of Henley," and traces this depiction of an "affective economy." Analysis helps to foreground how the Reeve's manorial…

Ecocritical examination of the depiction of the sea in the Ceyx and Alcyone episode of BD, focusing on its shorelessness, comparing it with analogous accounts and with the representation of water in John of Trevisa's "On the Properties of Things,"…

Explores the contrast between Theseus and Saturn in KnT as a metaphor for the lives of modern academic Chaucerians.

Identifies several similarities between Chaucer's Pardoner and the title character of John Haywood's "The Pardoner and the Friar" (pub. 1533).

Surveys depictions of love, from the Bible to English Renaissance literature, exploring poetic representations of love and the effects of efforts to sublimate or suppress it. The section on Chaucer (pp. 280-94), labeled "Post-Fin'amor English…

Investigates notions of contagion, melancholy, and reader response in BD, Gower's "Confessio Amantis," Sidney's "Old Arcadia," Shakespeare's "As You Like It," and four early modern "self-help" texts.

Defines "medieval female voice" as "any instance of thought or speech by a female character" and "evaluates the alterations made (by Chaucer and scribes) to five Italian-sourced female voices" in KnT (Emelye and Ypolita), MerT (May), FranT (Dorigen),…

Comments briefly on references to Chaucer in the fiction and criticism of Sinclair Lewis.

Argues that Chaucer is a "philosophical poet" who "innovated a radical, anti-teleological poetics of contingency," showing how in CYT, ClT, TC, and HF he "reworks his sources to articulate his vision of contingency, and contest humanist narratives of…

A series of twenty-four lectures (each 30 minutes) about the topography and social conditions of London. Lectures 4 and 5, entitled "Economic Life in Chaucer's London" and "Politics and Religion in Chaucer's London" describe the physical, economic,…

An anthology of literary quotations from English writers, arranged by the days of the months, January through December. Includes GP 1-18 under April 15.

Composed in the context of the bubonic plague, BD encourages rejection of despair.

Studies the literacy, education, and cultural milieu of Chaucer's audience, the courtly circle and the upper socioeconomic echelons, especially the GP portrait of the Pardoner and PardT, to suggest reader response based on theories of Iser,…

Reviews criticism of ShT as it relates to the history of accounting, arguing that Chaucer scholars would benefit from deeper familiarity with the subject. In Chaucer scholarship, descriptions of historical accounting practices are less precise and…

HF classifies memory as an aspect of Prudence, as reflected in its three-part structure and reinforced by its thematic meditation on fame. GP portraits develop with details of "artificial" memory, as do the pilgrimage itself and the game. KnT…

The levels of style of the first three Canterbury tales correspond to John of Garland's columnar figure, which is itself a memory locus derived from classical rhetoric.

Using the three parts of the "virtue of Providence" as the basis for the three-book structure of HF, Chaucer implies that, although time moves forward through history, the past,present, and future exist all at once.

Argues that Chaucer "experiments with the body-disabling power of music as a site of poetic potential," tallying how, in CT, "musical performance nearly always causes narrative tension" and music "prosthetizes disability"--"advental" insofar as it…

Shows that "actuarial forms of thinking" underlie the CT, particularly the tale-telling contest, the opening and closing of the GP, sea-trade and risk in the GP descriptions of the Merchant and the Shipman, and associative links nbetween mercantilism…

Shows how Biblical narratives underlie the CT, not only allusively but in narrative plots and figural schema, focusing on how materials from Genesis are present in GP (springtime creation), KnT (brotherly conflict similar to Cain and Abel), MilT…

The CT are seen as a single unit. In particular, Mel and MLT are analyzed in the light of Marsilio of Padua's "Defensor Pacis" and Wyclif's religious position.

Focuses on Mel as the central and unifying section of CT, reading it as an expression of Chaucer's preference for unvarnished moralism over poetry.