Browse Items (16327 total)

Surveys "the wide influence exerted by the Islamic eschatological narrative known as 'Mohamme's Ladder' on European literary production until the 17th century." Discusses the possibility that Chaucer knew the work, and assesses correspondences…

Argues that "late medieval poets envisioned the environment as a participant in the production of poetry," reading HF for the ways that it represents "creativity born within the whirl of the Aristotelian world of fluctuation." Also assesses…

Examines how Langland, Gower, and Chaucer--who approached Ricardian prophetic discourse in different ways--were later co-opted as prophets of various events and outlooks: Langland foretelling the English Reformation, Gower predicting the deposition…

Uses "the frameworks of illness narrative, narrative medicine, and trauma theory" along with the model found in Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" to "examine the doctor–patient relationship" in BD, Gower's "Confessio Amantis," and "Pearl,"…

Discusses the history of silent reading and commercial manuscript production for private reading, starting with Chaucer's BD and including considerations of the Auchinleck manuscript and British Library, MS Harley 978, to suggest that meditative…

Explores how the material book is a "metaphorically rich signifier" in contemporary culture and in a selection of English narratives, including BD and PF--where the narrators' books, serving as portals to the dream experience, result in "poetic…

Questions claims that BD is a poem of consolation, arguing that it is instead a "renewal of grief," focusing its three units of "reading, dreaming, [and] remembering," attending to source materials, and suggesting that the Black Knight may have been…

Argues that the forest described in BD, 416-26, is "both topographical and ekphrastic," comparing details of the forest with aspects of Wenceslas Hollar's engravings of the nave of Old St. Paul's Cathedral, reproduced in William Dugdale's history of…

Reads Chaucer's BD in the context of the material and ritual aspects of Blanche's death, using Freud's concept of the work of mourning to address the public, political, social, and economic work of John of Gaunt's mourning. A revised version of an…

Challenges the "dominant paradigm" for the date and composition of Bo, dismantling "several doubtful propositions"--influence on Usk's "Testament," Chaucer's use of Bo in his other works, Chaucer as a "poor Latinist." Analyzes Bo as a "late-medieval…

Translates Bo into modern idiomatic English, with text based on "The Riverside Chaucer," 3rd ed. (1986), and bottom-of-page notes, a glossary of proper names, and a citation glossary of Middle English words in Bo accompanied by Latin equivalents.…

Explores "how late-fourteenth and fifteenth-century [English] poets use dance to experiment and play with descriptions of motion." Includes discussion of Anel as well as Osbern Bokenham's "Legend of Holy Women," Thomas Chestre's "Sir Launfal," John…

Explores the "moral value for Chaucer's audience" of CYPT and articulates "alchemical connections" elsewhere in CT, especially SNT. Focuses on the diction and imagery of CYP, on CYT as a negative exemplum, and on the Yeoman's final rejection of…

Reads CYP in the context of late medieval English concerns about waste as "ecosystemic misconduct par excellence," linking to the plague the Canon's Yeoman's social contagion and the damage done to him by his working environment. Explicates the…

Contends that NPT "shows how free will and destiny . . . mysteriously connive together to form what can be called 'conditional free will'," arguing that the combination of Chauntecleer's dream and the outcome of the plot compromise Augustinian,…

Traces "similarities between Boethius's Lady Philosophy and Chaucer''s Prudence" in Mel regarding "the authority of women over men as the source of knowledge and wisdom." Comments on female empowerment and Prudence as a "Wife of Bath in disguise."…

Reads Th through the lens of Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of the carnivalesque as a dismantling of the religious and moral authority established by PrT in order to reassert the carnivalesque as the organizing principle of CT.

Includes a subsection titled "Detoxing England: Patience Agbabi's 'Telling Tales,'" arguing that Agbabi successfully detoxifies CT's "ideologeme of othering, most obviously in religious, sexual and racial dichotomies." Uses case-study comparison of…

Addresses "medieval and early modern literary uses of blood symbolism to describe and represent these marginalized groups: Christ, women, Jews, and disabled persons." Chapter 4 considers "the concepts of ritual murder libel, blood libel, and Jewish…

Compares the "structures of feeling" in PrT and Gower's "Tale of the Jew and the Pagan," particularly their interrelations of pity, violence, justice, antisemitism, and affective response. Suggests that the two authors reworked their versions at the…

Compares and contrasts Marjan Strojan's presentations of the Pardoner's sexual identity in his 1974 and 2012 Slovenian translations of the GP description of the Pardoner; WBP, 161-87; and PardPT; examining variations and omissions in the texts and…

Item not seen. WorldCat records indicate that Unit One of this pedagogical study guide includes a thematic section "Faith and Doubt," which features PardT (J. U. Nicolson's poetic translation), with exploratory study questions. A student workbook is…

Builds on previous readings of PardT that identify its descriptions of food, especially bread and wine, as part of its parody of the Christian mass and Eucharist. Demonstrates that Chaucer uses specifically Wycliffite terms when referring to food and…

Shows that "medical models for textual interpretation" structure Part 6 of CT. Assesses violent, authoritative models of medical cure posed in the GP description of the Physician; interrogates literary interpretation as self-repair in PhyT; and…

Argues that the "tidal influences" in FranT encourage "feminist interpretation" of Dorigen's promise, "identification of an environmentalist sensibility" in the tale, and attention to human subjection "to natural cycles and forces." Furthermore,…