Browse Items (15980 total)

Chapter 7, “Chaucer: Die ‘Canterbury Tales,’ ” summarizes the individual tales of CT, following the Chaucer Society order, and provides brief explanations of religious backgrounds and details.

Theorizes "the consequences of political discourse on bodies" in literary and cinematic frame-narratives, including discussion of CT, along with the "Pañcatantra," the "Vetala" of Somadeva, Boccaccio's "Decameron," Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Trilogy of…

“[A]pproaches the Canterbury Tales through the lens of humor theory, responding to a much-noted gap in existing scholarship by focusing primarily on the structures and mechanisms of humor in the text.”

Tabulates liturgical references within CT and argues that the poem depicts the secularization of liturgy and its appropriation for social control, while also presenting a carnivalesque celebration of the reversal of social hierarchy.

Argues that CT (specifically GP, KnT, MilT, and RvT) and Bodiam Castle "converge as ideological constructions," comparing the lives of Chaucer and Sir Edward Dallingridge (builder of Bodiam)--both witnessed at the Scrope vs. Grosvenor trial--and…

Describes the social implications of food and dining practices in late medieval cookbooks, social records, and aesthetic literature, commenting on the culinary concerns associated with the Franklin, Prioress, Squire, and Cook in GP and similar…

Surveys literary representations of sounds in various landscapes found in late medieval literature, including mention of the tournament in KnT and description of the tale-telling, singing, and music-making among the Canterbury pilgrims.

Interprets CT as a "compelling psychogram of a diverse community processing massive demographic shifts in the wake of recurrent epidemic waves." Explores disruptions of social and linguistic categories, PardT as an allegory of plague death, various…

Argues that Chaucer favors the popular idea that Brittonic literature and history are primarily oral. By doing so, Chaucer distances his contemporary England, with its reliance on Latin textual and cultural authority, from the political reality of…

Close comparative analysis of CT and Boccaccio's "Decameron," arguing that they present "pragmatic prudence" or "expediential calculation" as essential forms of human agency in negotiating limited knowledge, faulty perception, and cultural turmoil.…

Offers documentary evidence that roads, markets, and taverns were "conduits for and symbols of” class mobility/motility and rebellious tidings in post-Uprising medieval England, especially in Kent and on the Canterbury road. Against this…

Explores "the special connection that exists between travel and narration," especially when traveling in a group, assessing international narratives of travel from CT to Haruki Murakami's “Drive My Car.” Includes an abstract in English and in…

An edition of the complete CT, with selective foot-of-page glosses, and "Extra Material" that includes a life of Chaucer, and plot summaries of BD; HF; PF; TC; and, more extensively, each of the CT. No editor is identified, but a note says that the…

Outlines "the significance of blue in the medieval period," and "examines this connection between colour and virtue in literature, heraldic treatises and works of art,” including brief comments on blue and female fidelity in SqT and Wom Unc.

Studies how "the Virgin Mary and her followers, especially women living the enclosed life . . . occupied a central role in the development of the early English book," discussing works ranging from LGW, WBPT, and Mel to Richard Tottel’s" Songes and…

Collaborative reflection on the presentation and value of a study-days enhancement program called "Chaucer's World," designed both to help UK secondary education students prepare for the A-level English Literature exam and to increase appreciation of…

Explores the "psychological continuities between the Black Death and COVID-19" in a series of four essays, arranged chronologically, with an introduction, conclusion, and comprehensive index. Chapter 2, titled "The Pardoner, the Prioress, and the…

Illustrated tourist information pertaining to British writers and their works, arranged by geographical area, including introductions to sites associated with Chaucer: his tomb in Poets' Corner, his window in Southwark Cathedral, the Tabard Inn, and…

Considers John Trevisa's translations of "compendious" encyclopedic texts as examples of a prose literary form that is an influential part of a late medieval literary history, an "alternative" to the better-known tradition of Trevisa's poetic…

Explores "reductio ad absurdum" in "theology and romance texts of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries," including discussion of Chaucer's uses of it as "a marker of generic resistance to chivalric romance" in KnT and ClT.

Argues that "evolving discourses of gentility . . . served as models" for Chaucer, Sir Thomas Malory, and Henry Medwall, inspiring them "to write, variably, about socio-linguistic reform . . . and meta-literary reflection on the impact of newly…

Exemplifies ways in which medieval "romance writing takes up the notion that physiological processes and exterior influences can interweave to produce powerful psychological experiences," showing how the "creative possibilities of interweaving the…

Describes various depictions of breath, breathlessness, and "vital spirits" that signal deep emotion in medieval literature, including comments on BD, TC, and KnT, among other courtly and religious works.

Addresses issues of disease, medical practice, faith, household remedy, and gender in fourteenth-and fifteenth-century Middle English "medical discourse," often found embedded in or juxtaposed to broader works, including narrative poetry that engages…

Posits that Philip Perry, an eighteenth-century priest and early practitioner of medievalism, was a pioneer in using original sources, among them Chaucer. Perry's unpublished notebooks contain detailed information on many medieval writers and their…