Browse Items (16476 total)

Addresses performance texts associated with the early Elizabethan Inns of Court ("closet dramas, translations, masques, and orations"), arguing that they reflect four Chaucerian "paradigms of play" ("Chaucerian Self-Fashioning," "Chaucerian…

Applies the thought of Bernard of Clairvaux to issues of human action and subjection to God and law, as seen in ClT, MLT, KnT, FrT, and PhyT. Argues that a fuller understanding of Chaucer's "religious background" is essential to interpretation of his…

Dorigen in FranT has more than the two options of shame or death: she can also choose to break a bad law, even though the decision to let bad law stand "seems somehow, tragically, to have been taken long before the characters became conscious of…

Argues that Chaucer's claim in LGW that St. Augustine "hath gret compassioun / Of this Lucresse" is neither ironic nor misinformed, but is an accurate account of Augustine's position. Situating Augustine's comments about Lucretia within the broader…

Explores the concept of "cooperative" or "conjoint" agency in Chaucer's works to examine ideas "about the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity." Examines the notion of passivity in the works of Chaucer and Bernard of Clairvaux, as well as…

Attributes Chaucer's assertion of St. Augustine's "gret compassioun" for Lucrece as a rape victim (LGW, 1691) to the poets' unmediated first-hand knowledge of Book I of the "City of God," clarifying Augustine's sympathy for rape victims, arguing that…

The Prioress by omitting the passage which extolls King David in Psalm 8 betrays herself as ignorant of history. The Friar in blending vv.8-9 of Psalm 10 omits passages which chastise the aggrandisement of the friars at the expense of the poor. …

Explores the phallic imagery of MerT, particularly the innuendoes in "clyket" and "twiste."

Considers the authorship and manuscript provenance of a French version of the tale of Melibee, an analogue of Mel.

Comments on issues of complaint and consent in two essays included in this volume of SAC, linking the medieval past with the present. Includes response to Micah James Goodrich, "The Yeoman's Canon: On Toxic Mentors."

Examines intertextual relations between CT and Ackroyd's "Clerkenwell Tales," acknowledging the dependencies of the latter, but emphasizing its postmodernist techniques and themes.

Assesses the literary conventions and intellectual context of "The Court of Love," a sixteenth-century poem thought to be by Chaucer until the twentieth century. Emphasizes early modern modifications of medieval amatory verse, and includes comments…

In Gower's version of the Constance story, incest is a metaphor for the relationship between the Church and the crown, a means to critique the two. In contrast, MLT "tries to avoid suggesting any tension between lay and clerical power."

Studies the incest motif in Confessio Amantis as a "fundamental element" in Gower's explorations of father-daughter relationships and the relationships of authority. In this context, Bullón-Fernández considers Chaucer's MLT and PhyT as analogues…

Explores links between privacy and urban spaces in Fragment 1 of CT, especially MilT, in which each of the major male characters fails to control his own "pryvetee." The article follows Pierre Bourdieu in conceptualizing the practices of privacy as a…

Uses "thing theory" to posit that having things conferred subjectivity upon the holder in the Middle Ages. Applies this premise as a way to read Walter's treatment of Griselda in ClT, arguing that "Poor Griselda's selfless submission grows out of a…

Argues that Chaucer raises questions in ClT about relations between poverty and the nature of the self, gauging the extent to which Griselda's agency, selflessness, and lack of "things" are factors in Walter's "inhuman" treatment of her, and asking…

Eighteen essays by various authors, addressing topics such as confession, medicine, chaste marriage, contraception, homosexuality, lesbianism, cross-dressing, prostitution, castration, and various cultural studies: Jewish, Muslim, Eastern Orthodox,…

By making the Pardoner offensive, Chaucer "established a negative stereotype of the effeminate male in Western literature." Modern critical tradition perpetuates the negative stereotype, often ignoring the fact that the Canterbury society tolerates…

Argues that R. K. Root's groupings of manuscript variants in TC (alpha, beta, and gamma) evince Chaucer's developments in his characterizations of Pandarus, Troilus, and, especially, Criseyde; the characterizations also help to balance tragedy and…

Seventeen papers read at the Centenary Conference, Groningen, Jan.15-16, 1986. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for One Hundred Years of English Studies in Dutch Universities under Alternative Title.

Argues that Lydgate's critical return to prominence, after his earlier diminished critical attention, may stem in part from comparisons with Chaucer.

CkT echoes important elements of Genesis, including the themes of disobedience and banishment, the seeking of pleasure, and post-Fall moratlity.

Compares and contrasts aspects of RvT with two analogues, the A and B versions of "Le Meunier et les .II. Clers," arguing that Chaucer's version achieves greater vitality, clearer characterizations and motivations, and a great deal of comic irony.

Chaucer's version of MLT is more like Trevet's than the folktale version identified as "The Handless Maiden." If Chaucer knew this folktale version, his choice of Trevet's more sophisticated version is another tribute to his art.