Browse Items (16035 total)

Argues that the power of WBT, though it is commonly regarded as a lai," comes from an underlying subversion by the use of fabliau, which makes the tale a "hybrid story." The "question of what women most want" has surprising affinities with the…

Edition of the "Tale of Gamelyn," including a description of manuscripts, diplomatic transcriptions of ten manuscripts, a critical edition with collated variants, and critical apparatus. Also includes a Modern English translation of "Gamelyn" and a…

Analyzes the dialect forms and textual variants of the "Tale of Gamelyn" in four of the twenty-five CT manuscripts that contain it (Ha4 Cp La Pw), arguing that, in "Gamelyn," these manuscripts evince a textual tradition and editorial practice which…

Identifies "Boethian sentiments" in an eight-line stanza appended to TC in St. John's, Cambridge, MS L.1, fol. 119v.

Encourages readers to keep track of the money in ShT, assessing the coded actions of gifting, receiving, and reciprocating in the Tale, analyzing the merchant's response to Don John's request for 100 franks (7.281-96), and suggesting that the readers…

Challenges claims that the first-person feminine pronouns of ShT 7.11-19 indicate that the tale was originally intended to be told by the Wife of Bath, reading the lines as if they were presented in a "miming male" voice, and suggesting that the tale…

Objects to Robert L. Chapman’s argument that the ShT was originally intended for the Shipman, not the Wife Bath, comparing Chaucer's tale with Boccaccio's "Decameron" 8.1 as examples of the "Lover's Gift Regained" motif, and showing that Chaucer's…

Approaches SNPT as translations of source materials, assessing Chaucer's assignment of his early life of St. Cecilia to the Second Nun as narrator, the implications of rhyme royal, and the thematic and formal concerns of transformation, idleness, and…

Provides textual evidence to confirm that the three portions of the Middle English Rom--A, B, and C--derive from different manuscript groupings of their French source, the "Roman de la Rose," corroborating arguments that the three portions were…

Frames Rom "in a lineage of narrative fiction going back to the twelfth-century predecessors of the two authors [Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun] and attempts to describe their respective innovations." Includes and interprets various texts…

Traces "the afterlife of the 'Romance of the Rose' in fourteenth-century England, arguing that the RR "exercised its influence on fourteenth-century English literature in two principal ways": 1) "the development of a self-reflexive focus on how…

Characterizes Oswald the Reeve as a guiler beguiled and a "judge who unwittingly judges himself by his own principles," examining aspects of GP (Miller and Reeve), MilPY, and RvPT for the ways that Oswald's retributive assault on Robin lacks…

Explores the relations between emotion and identity in PrPT, observing that the presence of Jews "amps up its emotional charge," particularly how it "provokes--and coopts--a huge range of emotions in the service of Christian piety." Considers the…

Assesses parallels between the "greyn" of PrT 7.662 and the three grains of legend that Seth laid upon the tongue of Adam when the latter was buried; suggests that the ambiguities of Chaucer's presentation indicate his artistic purpose.

Argues that the use of Dante's "Paradiso" 53 in the initial presentation of faith in PrT reflects Chaucer's sophisticated engagement with the ways humans try to articulate transcendent truth.

Assesses the five uses of "place" as a locational noun in the description of the tournament in KnT, arguing that it has a "precise technical meaning," i.e., the "grassy ground of the arena within the lists." This meaning is also found in Middle…

Provides "definitive texts and exhaustive variorum commentary" with facing-page translations, introduction, and appendices.

A new verse translation of "Pearl" with original Middle English text and modern English version on facing pages. Contains a brief preface and longer introduction, which discusses current scholarship and criticism.

Investigates the extent to which ParsT as a manual of confession can be seen to encourage the process of "individualization" theorized by Michel Foucault and to subvert the "immense control that the Church had over medieval lives" and aligning with…

Introduces Japanese analogues of PardT dating from the seventeenth or eighteenth century, and compares them with their Chinese and Indian ancestors, in order both to hypothesize the genealogies and to trace the change of motifs through transmission.…

Explores parallels of plot and detail found in "Pamphilus de Amore" (or "Pamphilus and Galatee"), "aspects" of the "Roman de la Rose," "parts" of Juan Ruiz's "Libro de Buen Amor," and the first three books of TC, demonstrating that the "'Pamphilus'…

Explores the tension between "solaas" and "sentence" in three features of NPT (its representations of humans and non-humans, its reference to the Uprising of 1381, and its gender politics), investigating the importance of the rhetoric of the Tale in…

Describes how GP reflects "Chaucer's fascination" with social diversity and "bodily variety," and reads MkT as a "verse anthology of disability narratives," using various approaches drawn from disability studies to examine several of the Monk's…

Explores MkT as a revelation of its narrator, positing a structural arrangement among the individual tragedies and their various depictions of Fortune and interpreting this arrangement as a reflection of the Monk's character and psychology: he…

Argues that the "organization and success" of MilT depends upon the "dramatic irony" of tensions between its courtly and common, sacred and profane, and realistic and fantastic elements, exploring such tensions in the signifying names of the…