Craun, Edwin.
Amy N. Vines and Lee Templeton, eds. New Directions in Medieval Mystical and Devotional Literature: Essays in Honor of Denise N. Baker (Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press, 2023), pp. 55-72.
Shows that aspects of the late medieval "pastoral program" of obligating "all Christians to admonish their neighbors about their sins" underlies the Reeve's reproval of the Miller and the Canon's Yeoman's of the Canon. In these cases, distortions of…
Hurley, Gina Marie.
Amy N. Vines and Lee Templeton, eds. New Directions in Medieval Mystical and Devotional Literature: Essays in Honor of Denise N. Baker (Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press, 2023), pp. 163-82.
Identifies the limited "temporal scale" in SNT, arguing that its closing lines (550–53) "leap . . . into eternity" and "create the impression of the endurance of Cecilia’s church, a miracle not unlike that of her prolonged life." Contrasts…
Vaccaro, Christopher, ed.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022.
Twelve essays by various authors, covering religious, courtly, and secular texts and contexts, with an introduction by the editor and a comprehensive index. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Painful Pleasures: Sadomasochism in…
Francis, Kersti.
Christopher Vaccaro, ed. Painful Pleasures: Sadomasochism in Medieval Cultures (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022), pp. 292-324; 6 b&w illus.
Assesses "iterations of sadomasochistic historophilia"--a term coined term here--in Chaucer's "use of Trojan and Theban history" in TC, examining the "role of Statius's "Thebaid," the place of Criseyde's collar-like Theban brooch, and the narrator's…
Raskolnikov, Masha.
Christopher Vaccaro, ed. Painful Pleasures: Sadomasochism in Medieval Cultures (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022), pp. 235-66.
Investigates queer consolation in ClT, exploring interconnections among consent, Griselda's masochistic suffering, Walter's sadistic testing and desire to know, their “power exchange" (a concept drawn from BDSM), the gameful earnestness of…
Shapiro, Aaron Herschel.
Ph.D. dissertation (Middle Tennessee State University, 2023). Dissertation Abstracts International A85.06(E). Fully accessible at https://jewlscholar.mtsu.edu/items/1a770bf2-20f3-4ebb-b53a-952d55b25a52 (accessed February 2, 2025).
Traces the development of a "salvific but antisemitic fantasy of Judaization" in western aesthetics from St. Paul to modern writers, and identifies an "alternate mode of modern poetics based in the Jewish philosophy of language and in the practice of…
Sarmiento Hinojosa, Bernardo D.
Ph.D. dissertation (University of California, Berkeley, 2022), Dissertation Abstracts International 86.03(E). Abstract available at https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8qk5p6x6 (accessed February 1, 2025).
Examines "experimentalist modes of inquiry in Middle English literature and natural philosophy," including discussions of HF, LGWP, and other texts for the ways they "stage mental experiments that show how the material world might be perceived and…
Rudman, Charlotte.
Ph.D. dissertation (King’s College London, 2022), Dissertation Abstracts International 84.10. Abstract available at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en
/studentTheses/listening-to-dreams (accessed February 1, 2025).
Argues "that Chaucer developed his own theory of sound in his dream vision poetry." His theory--that sound travels and transforms rather than dissipates--was adapted from his scientific learning," particularly Boethius's "De institutione musica."…
Rozenski, Steven, Joshua Byron Smith, and Claire M. Waters, eds.
Turnhout: Brepols, 2023. \
Fifteen essays by various authors on topics related to medieval mysticism, art, literature, and their later reception and influence, with an introduction by the editors and an account of Newman's publications by Jeffrey E. Singerman. For two essays…
Breen, Katharine.
Steven Rozenski, Joshua Byron Smith, and Claire M. Waters, eds. Mystics, Goddesses, Lovers, and Teachers: Medieval Visions and Their Modern Legacies. Studies in Honour of Barbara Newman (Turnhout: Brepols, 2023), pp. 239-65.
Treats Fame's dual nature as goddess and personification in Hesiod, Aeschines, Virgil, and HF. While Chaucer's character echoes the duality of its predecessors, she is not a goddess--"never characterized as a bride or daughter of the Christian…
Berry, Craig A.
Steven Rozenski, Joshua Byron Smith, and Claire M. Waters, eds. Mystics, Goddesses, Lovers, and Teachers: Medieval Visions and Their Modern Legacies. Studies in Honour of Barbara Newman (Turnhout: Brepols, 2023), pp. 261-76.
Reviews critical approaches to Ret, reading it as both confessional and aesthetic, comparing its duality with those in Purse and the ending of TC, and exploring resonances with ParsT. Assesses Ret as a recantatory formulation that asks its…
Roders, Dana M.
Ph.D. dissertation (Purdue University, 2023), Dissertation Abstracts International A84.12(E). Partially accessible at https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/dissertations/AAI30501530/ (accessed February 1, 2025).
Investigates "how medieval authors implement impaired bodies in service of spiritual exploration," addressing depictions of impaired bodies generally excluded from disability studies, such as "personified sins, aging bodies, and martyrs' bodies."…
Anatomizes the motif of resistance to love "across the chronology and variety of medieval English romance, from twelfth-century Anglo-Norman lais to fifteenth-century prose works," exploring "ways in which it reinforces or subverts contemporary…
Petrosillo, Sara.
Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2023.
Assesses various medieval works to show that training instructions for medieval falconry "offer a means of understanding how poetic languageworks, and particularly how it works to represent women." One section describes how metaphors of mewed hawks…
Pavlinich, Elan Justice.
New York: Routledge, 2023.
Explores how various texts of medievalism (graphic novels, retellings, rap music, performance art, etc.) "represent radical, nontraditional sex acts enjoyed by people who are typically excluded from both popular culture and medieval narratives" and…
Pasnau, Robert.
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 53 (2023): 519-43.
Offers precedents from medieval texts to show that to learn from a text, readers "have reason to consider what its author means"; that, when readers are "morally engaged with a text," they have reason to engage with the author's intentions"; and…
O’Brien, Sarah.
Ph.D. dissertation (Fordham University, 2022), Dissertation Abstracts International A83.12(E). Accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global (accessed January 30, 2025).
Studies genre in CT, "Piers Plowman," and Gower's "Mirour de l’omme," focusing on estates satire, "redemptive discourse," the mirror tradition, legal discourse, and "genealogies of sin."
Miller, Timothy S.
New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy & Profession 4 (2023): 42--53.
Explores the pedagogical possibilities of using Kate Heartfield's "The Road to Canterbury" (2018)--a "contemporary gamified adaptation" of Chaucer's life, world, and CT. Comments generally on using "interactive fiction" in the classroom, describes…
Meyer-Lee, Robert J.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2023.
Considers theoretical, ideological, and practical questions concerning the value and valuation of literature and literary studies, with recurrent attention to contemporary issues in editing, canonicity, interpretation, and institutional status,…
Matukhin, Max.
Ph.D. dissertation (Princeton University, 2023), Dissertation Abstracts International A84.08(E). Fully accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global (accessed February 1, 2025).
Explores how "false confessions and sermons" in late medieval literature "investigat[e] the boundaries between truthfulness and falsehood, literature and reality, the profane and the sacred." Includes discussion of PardPT.
Malcolm, A. V. Aylin.
Ph.D. dissertation (University of Pennsylvania, 2023), Dissertation Abstracts International A84.12(E). Abstract available via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global (accessed January 31, 2025).
"[O]ffers an interdisciplinary perspective on later medieval views of animals, focusing on the Latin, French, and English texts circulating in England." Includes assessment of "Chaucer’s depictions of inarticulable grief and interspecies empathy"…
Long, Mary Beth.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2023.
Explores how "latent Marian maternal elements" inform a range of late medieval texts, focusing on how the devotional ideal of "imitatio Mariae"--rooted in Mary's "inimitable biology" as virgin and mother--informs Marian imagery and echoes in Margery…
Kern-Stähler, Annette, and Elizabeth Robertson, eds.
Contains twenty-six essays by various authors on topics relating to the "wonder and mystery" of the five senses (and "Multisensoriality") in English literature, medieval to the present. The introduction by the editors describe the field of study, the…
Trigg, Stephanie.
Annette Kern-Stähler and Elizabeth Robertson, eds. Literature and the Senses (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), pp. 31-48.
Outlines various "cognitive and sensual contexts" that frame "face-gazing in literature" and analyzes the descriptions of male gaze at female faces in TC and BD, both "mediated by the complex ideology of courtly love," comparing them with discussion…
Saunders, Corinne.
Annette Kern-Stähler and Elizabeth Robertson, eds. Literature and the Senses (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), pp. 107-24.
Comments on medieval and modern understandings of hearing voices, then assesses the phenomenon in Middle English romances and mystical accounts. Demonstrates how in TC and BD Chaucer "extends romance motifs" to explore "the processes of the…
