Browse Items (16318 total)

Investigates the "Great Mother" archetype in PardT 6.729-31, helping to explain the "primal force" of the Old Man in the Tale, his womb / tomb affiliations with the young tavern boy, and the "Tale's central image of the tree" as "ambivalent mother."

Braswell surveys the mechanical devices in late-medieval culture and traces their origins in Continental and Arabic lands. She asserts that Chaucer was knowledgeable about machinery and its prevalence and that the magic tricks in FranT correspond to…

Connects the use of "In principio" in the GP description of the Friar (1.254) with WBP 3.857-81, citing evidence from a wide array of material to show that the phrase, derived from the Gospel of John, evokes a "well-known apotropaic formula"…

Studies the development of "poetic self-assertions" and "authorship poetics" in late medieval poetry, concentrating on Guillaume de Machaut's influence on Chaucer in LGWP and on Christine de Pizan. Comments on the legacies of Dante, Petrarch, and…

Examines the lyrics embedded in BD, LGWP, PF, and TC, considering their functions in context and the extent to which textual and codicological evidence can clarify the process of their incorporation. Contrasts these lyrics with French models in…

Chaucer's lyrics, usually written in imitation of the current French forms of ballades and rondels, were, in fact, his most influential legacy to the fifteenth-century Chaucerians. Chaucer may have written his early poetry (now lost or unattributed)…

The multiple voices in "Complaint of Mars" mask the identity of the real lyric subject. An examination of these voices reveals that the real lyric subject is the reader, who discovers that he or she is not, like Mars, an autonomous self.

Reads Chaucer's lyric poetry as an important bridge or "hinge" between the medieval lyric poem and its modern successors.

Vol. 1: Text and Introduction.

Explores how in BD, HF, and PF "Chaucer concretizes abstractions, turning ideas into poetic form." The poems are "artistic recreations of medieval literary and philosophical commonplaces about life."

MerT is a direct response to passus 9 of the B version of Piers Plowman, presenting an "unkyndely similitude" of marriage in contrast to the ideal expressed in Langland's poem.

Baker and Morrison read MerT as a "sustained response" to Piers Plowman B.9. Both works are concerned with marriage, gender, and the pursuits of appetite. Whereas MerT poses a woman who must live expediently, Piers Plowman absorbs gender into…

Documents the features of ordinatio in the ten "landmark" manuscripts of CT, grouping the patterns as "dense" (Hengwrt/Ellesmere and related manuscripts) and "sparse" (Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 198, and related manuscripts), focusing on the…

Chaucer's changes from Boccaccio's 'Il Filostrato' in the swoon scenes develop the characterization of the three participants, adding comedy and reflecting medical treatments of the swoon.

Troilus and Criseyde fall in love through looking, here analyzed through medieval optical science, as a literary convention, and as a gendered social taboo. Stanbury contrasts the activity, passivity, and willfulness of Criseyde's gaze with that of…

Edward Schweitzer has linked the scene of Absolon's kissing the "naked ers" with medieval medical cures of lovesickness. However, the episode may also draw on Ovid's proposal in "Remedia Amoris" that desperate lovers may be cured by witnessing the…

Troilus's disease of erotomania is gluttonously lustful, irredeemably egocentric, and life-denying--an example to be shunned in favor of Christian love.

Lacanian analysis of LGW that considers the hope of redemption as a function of charity in Aquinas and in Freud's commentary on Daniel Paul Schreber. Though beautiful and concerned with love, LGWP promises but does not fulfill the desire it creates,…

Historical novel about the lives of Philippa de Roet and her sister Katherine, focusing on their relations with Chaucer, John of Gaunt, and the English court circles.

Volume B, entitled "The Medieval Era," includes selections from CT (GP, MilPT, and WBPT; pp. 1239-1306) in the translation by J. U. Nicolson, with brief notes and glosses. The 2d edition (2009) adds David L. Pike as a gen. ed., and includes the same…

Explores how "contemporary academic criticism" has influenced twentieth-century adaptations of CT for children, commenting on versions by Eleanor Fargeon, Selina Hastings, Ian Serraillier, Geraldine McCaughrean, and Joel Myerson.

Fourteen essays by various authors on topics in English literature of the late fourteenth through early sixteenth centuries. Includes an introduction and a bibliography of Gray's publications. For seven essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Long…

Students of Chaucer's poetry can easily appreciate its sounds and syntactical patterns, and should examine for themselves issues such as the pronunciation of final -e. Prosodic analysis can also be applied to translated versions of Chaucer. Live…

Within this larger comprehensive study of 'Piers Plowman' in Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS 733B (N), the authors note that Chaucer's scribe, Adam Pinkhurst, may have made scribal corrections to the B-text copy M (London, British…

Argues that Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida" combines the concern with Boethian logic and necessity found in TC with Ramist thinking, indicating that Edward de Vere, earl of Oxford, was the author of the play. The combination prompts a…