Browse Items (16012 total)

Identifies limitations in the Manly-Rickert "Corpus of Variants" and urges caution in its use, explaining that their use of the term "variant" excludes dialectical variants as well as spelling variants. Regional dialectical variants are especially…

The narrator of this work, pretending ignorance, is conscious of his position as a poet, and a humorous but skeptical attitude towards utterance. Like a nominalist, he examines everyday speech, which is only "eyr ybroken," from the point of view of…

MLP and other comments suggest that late-medieval readers were "disconcerted" by Gower's repeated treatments of incest. Examination of his poem reveals him (through Genius) turning Amans from the incestuous love of Venus and Cupid to pure heavenly…

Suggests that in three places in the ShT--lines 1519-21, 1536-37, 1581--Chaucer exploits two denotations of "chevyssaunce." In addition to the specific denotation "usury," the word has a more general denotation--MED meaning 2--which, when applied…

Investigates "premodern 'vertue,' or the embodied excellence that enables women's ethical action in vernacular English poetry between 1343 and 1623." Focuses on "material virtue"--the "natural potencies of physical bodies"--rather than on habit-,…

Compares PrT with Gonzalo de Berceo's thirteenth-century "Judiezno" (Little Jewish Child) from his "Los Milagros de Nuestra Seʹora."

A reading of the "Gawain"-poet's works in light of medieval ideals of social behavior as represented in courtesy books.

Contends that Chaucer's romances, including KnT, MLT, WBT, SqT, FranT, Th, and TC, "exhibit . . . interest in adversity, or philosophical or religious contempt" for suffering as a primary theme.

Summarizes the political history of the fall of Armenia in 1375, surveying its impact on the court of Richard II and its status as a "haunting symbol" of catastrophe in Middle English literature. Discusses SqT, Anel, the description of the Knight in…

English scholars played an important part in transmitting Arabic learning to Europe. The "matter of Araby" may be set alongside the matters of Troy and Britain as an impulse in medieval English literature. It appears in Chaucer's MLT, Th, and the…

Presents the first of two successive articles on RvT and its analogues. Claims that "The Mylner of Abyngton" has not drawn as much critical attention as it deserves. Compares "The Mylner of Abyngton" with three continental analogues and discusses…

Despite some unenthusiastic criticism and even denial of his authorship of parts of the play, Shakespeare adapts KnT faithfully, reorienting its topicality, redesigning it for the stage, and broadening its focus.

Explores how Dante and Petrarch provide a "schema for understanding" the modifications Chaucer made to the view of love in Boccaccio's "Filostrato." The "Vita Nuova" offers a "hierarchy of love," analogous to that in TC even though Chaucer may not…

Examines frames of cultural reference (legal, domestic, physical, and literary--especially romance), arguing that "two versions of masculinity defined the socially performed lives of men in late medieval England." The first version was normative and…

Explores suggestive ambiguities in the characterizations of Emily in KnT, May in MerT, Criseyde in TC, and the Prioress in GP, considering narrative techniques, points of view, and ways that Chaucer adapts and manipulates the ideal of a romance…

Explores medieval English marital laws and practices that underlie details of the WBP and her description in GP, particularly her marriages at "chirche dore," her dowers, and the transaction that gave Jankyn control of her lands--before she took it…

Considers Chaucer's dream poems in the context of "epithalamic conventions" found in medieval French dream poems and their sources, exploring similarities of "structure, imagery, and theme."

Chaucer uses enfolding irony in MerT and FranT to examine the good marriage, with insights on courtly love and adultery through shifting perspectives and character conflict.

Challenges the putative "simple and even balance" of the Marriage Group in CT, discussing several factors that highlight Chaucer's "purposeful inconclusiveness" in the dramatic interplay among the Tales: 1) MerT and FranT are each an "attack" on the…

Offers corroborative evidence from Rutebuef's "Frère Denise" that Chaucer's Friar "provided money to marry off girls he had himself seduced."

Though some readers have seen the contract in this tale as evidence of Chaucer's acceptance of the male's dominance in marriage, the relationship of Dorigen and Arveragus is actually an ideal society in miniature.

Rhetorically nearer to exhortation than to encomium, the didactic structure of this passage (4.1267-1392) rises in a series of contradictions that confuse doctrines and undercut ironic perceptions. None of the proposed assignments of the passage…

Identifies possibilities for recognizing "political resonances" in ClT, discussing Walter's title (marquis) as it was granted in 1385 to Robert de Vere, Richard's favorite. The title was "unusual" and "short-lived" in Chaucer's experience. Olson…

Traces the careers of Caxton, de Worde, and others to show (amid much else) that their interest in publishing Chaucer and other vernacular writers can be correlated with a "movement from opportunistic diversification...to forms of consolidation and…

A ballade by Eustache Deschamps poses a "demande d'amour" similar to that of the Loathly Lady in WBT, wherein a courtier is required to render judgment on a question of love.