Browse Items (16035 total)

Though the first two sections of HF abound in expressions of personal experience--"I saw," "I heard"--the pattern of use and the shaping force of art and science undermine the trustworthiness of appearance. The switch to third-person narrative in…

RvT differs from its sources and analogues by developing the relationship between sight, desire, and reason, ultimately questioning the function of vision, the most important of the senses.

Argues that Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" provides Chaucer with a means of understanding time as a unified and simultaneous whole, and that he deploys this understanding in the dream visions, and especially TC.

TC contains a series of images of windows both open and closed, which are added to (or changed from) Chaucer's sources and which provide a commentary on the relationships between the lovers. Views out of windows are limited views, or "fictions,"…

Tracks developments in the theory and practice of personification allegory in medieval literature (especially the "Roman de la Rose," works by Dante, and works by Chaucer) in relation to optical theory and epistemology. As confidence in the…

Carruthers explores the role of memory, one of the five divisions of classical rhetoric, in composing and understanding medieval poetry. Works such as "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and Chaucer's KnT are "memory-friendly" because images…

The Prioress's worldly graces and associations with Mary are well-suited to her esteemed position of religious and social power. Frank speculates that Chaucer chose PrT for its associations with the "cult of Notre Dame du Puy."

Argues in detail that the "Gawain"-poet develops a "visually focused descriptive poetic" in his works and, by way of conclusion, asks whether such a poetic is unusual in late-medieval English literature, going on to treat works by Chaucer, "Sir…

Shows that the Nun's Priest is often illustrated in manuscripts and books, even though he is not described in the GP, arguing that the illustrations are informed by the Host's comments on the Priest and by the description of the protagonist of NPT,…

The deceptive nature of physical sight in FranT is based on the medieval theory of optics, whereby one's vision--buttressed by "proper" control of the will--aided one in knowing God, while "improper" control made one susceptible to the dangers of…

Surveys the intellectual and social backgrounds of medieval understandings of nobility and "gentilesse," and analyzes noble birth and noble action in TC and CT, especially the ironies of failed "noble potential" in TC, the framing noble ideals of the…

The Wife of Bath, the Prioress, and the wife in ShT represent themselves as victims of violence to make themselves attractive to men. In doing so, they draw on texts, such as medieval saints' lives and romances, that depict violence as central to the…

When an angry God of Love accuses the narrator of a breach of faith, Alceste rebukes the god for believing false counselors. This action reflects the political situation of Chaucer's time. The Lord's Appellant had attacked Richard II's corrupt…

Conversions in TC are modeled ironically on those of St. Paul and St. Augustine. Like Paul, Troilus cannot escape his fate; he can only accept and serve. Like Augustine, Criseyde vainly tries to master the narrative that is out of her control.

Identifies the "tregetoures" of FranT 4.1141, not as jugglers or magicians, but as the "actors, craftsmen, 'artisans mécaniques'" who produced spectacular entertainments such as the ones recorded by chroniclers to have taken place at the Royal…

Describes the verbal and visual records of Parisian court entertainments which have parallels with Chaucer's description of visual spectacle putatively produced by magicians ("tregetours") in FranT 5.1139-51,

Describes Chaucer's self-conscious exploration of time in Mars, arguing that in form and content the poem presents an ambivalent, "permeable, and even unstable" view of secularity but also implies the "palpably absent" other of transcendence. More…

Traces the use of the minuscule "a" in the Latin quotations of the Ellesmere manuscript to support the argument that these annotations derive from the ways Chaucer imagines the form of CT.

Reflects on secrecy and fear in confessional moments in several works, including TC.

Secrecy about sex cuts across genres and develops its own forms of rhetoric, as seen in works from Petrarch's "Secretum" through the "Roman de Silence," Margery Kempe, and PardPT.

Responds to criticism of TC, especially that of C. S. Lewis on courtly love, and examines the poem's emphases on human vulnerability and limitations, reinforced by recurrent colloquialisms, juxtapositions of the sublime and the risible, and concern…

Explores the thematic implications of several verbal ambiguities or double meanings in KnT: "array" (dress and predicament), "hert" (heart and hart), "wele" (joy and wheel), nuances of "turne," "boone" (reward and bone), and "righte way" in…

For individual essays that pertain to Chaucer, of this volume.

Characterizes the "scholarly interests" of the more than 150 applicants for a 2003 tenure-track job in medieval studies at Hunter College of the City University of New York.

Suggests that in medieval literature generally the "motif of crossing a body of water was regularly perceived as an epistemological operation of a physical and a spiritual kind," and explores the notion in several narratives, including MLT, examining…