Browse Items (15542 total)

Examines variants in WBP 3.115-17 (especially "wight" versus "wright") to identify flaws in applying cladistic theory to manuscript stemmatics. Cladistic analysis underlies the Canterbury Tales Project.

Illustrates how literary works "can be read existentially from the point of view of the reader's ontological concern with them," discussing James Joyce's "Clay," William Blake's "The Little Black Boy," and WBPT. Reads WBT as a "reflection of the…

Comments on various assessments of the Prioress as a figure of false appearances and suggests that Chaucer undercuts PrT through the reference to Hugh of Lincoln, which ironically evokes the twelfth-century Hugh, bishop of Lincoln, who defended Jews.

Argues that in BD Chaucer "heavily inlays the Black Knight's long description of his lady with imagery of the Blessed Virgin" and "that the effect produced by such imagery is an apotheosis not inconsonant with the traditional apotheosis of the…

Examines the meaning and Chaucer's attitude in CT 1(A).725-42 and his faith in words as compared to Shakespeare's.

Examining Joachim of Fiore, Bonaventure's Legenda Maior, Roman de la rose, Dante's Commedia, and CT, Emmerson and Herzman argue that, in eschatological perspective, CT exemplifies typical medieval apocalyptic thought. The general structure,…

Reads CYP and ManPT in light of Agamben's theories of sovereignty and exclusion and de Certeau's notion of a "person in-between," considering as well several instances of slander and accusation in late-medieval London records. London, the Host, and…

Analyzes John Fletcher's and William Shakespeare's collaboration on "The Two Noble Kinsmen," an interpretation of KnT, and offers how "The Two Noble Kinsmen" represents a "meditation . . . of the vernacular literary canon," as it allegorizes the…

Offers background and context for various kinds of "unsettling" dreams in literature, mentioning that Pertelote treats Chanticleer's "anxiety dream" in NPT 7.2882ff. "as a cryptic diagnosis [of humoral disorder] which required immediate prescription…

Woolf manages, in her essay "The Pastons and Chaucer," artfully and expertly to conjure up the medieval period while also insisting that Chaucer's gift as a storyteller depends on his creation of an art that improves upon life.

Challenges arguments that seek to identify the friar of SumT with a specific fraternal order and adduces the Rules of various fraternal orders and commentaries on these Rules to show that "general antifraternal literature" underlies many details of…

Hostile propositions about the friars ("antifraternalism") in polemical tracts, works of theology, and literary fictions belong to a common literary tradition that began with the polemics against the friars of William of Saint Amour, with arguments…

Those similarities to Lollard doctrine--protest against blasphemy, unwillingness to "curse for tithes," and distaste for storytelling--that have been used to argue that Chaucer's Parson was a Lollard or Wycliffite were not peculiar to the Lollards;…

Compares the antisemitism in the three works, describing the Jews of PrT as "an undistinguished mass with no face, and no individuality, a mass that can instinctively react, if given a chance, against their Christian neighbour"; they are less…

Argues that along with works by Langland and Gower, Chaucer's writings, especially CT, may be read as an indirect critique of crusading.

Questions why "The Assembly of Ladies" has been in print for so long and explores the role of its anonymity in its publishing history. Addresses its attribution to Chaucer, affiliations with the corpus of his works, and surmises about female…

Explores human affiliations with the "non-power" of animals in four Chaucerian images: capons in PardT, mouse in WBP (in contrast with lioness), stags in KnT, and carrion in ClT. Contrasts these with the brass steed as an image of power in SqT.

Tallies Chaucer's depictions of hunting in BD, LGW, and FranT, and argues that these, in contrast with other works in Middle English, show a "marked lack of sympathy for animals as quarries."

Explores the "double-contextual development" of characters and their actions in beast tales and beast fables, investigating double meanings (animal and human) in such narratives. Includes discussion of how NPT follows the Renart tradition in this…

Argues that the category of "allegorical animal poems" disguises the fact that such poems "simultaneously hide and reveal the contested nature of the boundary between humans and animals." Comments on fable tradition, the nature of allegory, and…

For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Anglo-Scottish Border and the Shaping of Identity under Alternative Title.

Edits and translates a hitherto unknown Anglo-Norman analogue to PrT. The "Hugo de Lincolnia" is the only vernacular version of the story of Little St. Hugh of Lincoln produced contemporaneously with Chaucer's hagiographical tale.

Demonstrates that John Lydgate's modifications of his sources in his "Troy Book" result in a "convincing picture of the ancient world," although Lydgate did not achieve the superior historical texture that Chaucer produced in KnT.

Brook suggests that Sir Paon de Ruet may have been "a cadet of the family of the Lords of Roeulx" and part of the entourage of Philippa of Hainaut. He was probably born about 1309.

Dawkins uses the frame-and-tale structure of CT to organize a series of excurses on evolution and the development of biological life. Recurrent references to Chaucer and CT, with brief discussion on evolutionary biology as a model in the Canterbury…