Browse Items (16012 total)

Identifies the "compound humor" of the "geographic dialect" material in RvT and the GP description of the Reeve, where he is depicted as an "immigrant" from Norfolk to London and thereby the butt of humor for indigenous Londoners.

An introduction to satire for classroom use, directed at university students and focusing on English literature from Chaucer to Carol Ann Duffy; concerned with definitions, social contexts, and the transaction between reader and text. The discussion…

Deals chiefly with Patristic and Gnostic traditions.

Describes the "traditional Christian" symbolism that underlies the fowler/bird and winter/spring imagery in LGWP 125-39, identifying biblical roots, exegetical commentary, and literary examples that precede Chaucer, suggesting that the "alert…

Studies clothing in imaginative literature, arguing that writers of romances redirect the negative depictions of the courtly body found in clerical chronicles and penitential writings into positive images that convey virtue. While religious and…

Chaucer employs "costume signs" in TC, affecting plot and characterization. Signature costumes assigned to each character shed light on significant parts of the plot, as do the reversal and degeneration of costume patterns. Characterization through…

Chaucer's Troilus derives from three reflections of the "Iliad": classical, the Christian-allegorical, and the romance. Sarpedon's feast is central to TC, with classical, Scholastic, and finally Dantesque treatment of free will, fate, and…

The handwritten collations in the British Library 643.M.1 copy of Urry's "Chaucer" are in the hand of Samuel Pegge the elder, antiquary and vicar in Kent, 1730-51. The collations are from British Library MS Add. 9832, which Pegge evidently owned.

Argues that Johnson's perfunctory references to Chaucer reflect the former's view of the latter not as an excellent "English" poet but as one who successfully transmitted literature from the Continent into Britain. Considers possible reasons Johnson…

Chaucer prepares for Arcite's Samsonlike vow to cut his hair by drawing on the traditions of Samson as a fool for love and by reworking and adding details to the story of Boccaccio's "Teseida." Samson was commonly paired with Hercules as biblical…

Includes a chapter, "Sharing Laughter" (pp. 205-32), that identifies examples from late medieval art and literature where laughter constitutes "moral censorship" of same-sex desire or actions, then focuses on the Pardoner; his relation with the…

Psychoanalytic reading of PF that identifies a reversal of the "logical sequence of origin, wish, and desire." This reversal "represses consciousness" and disguises the presence of the "Chaucerian ego" of the poem that is recognizable in the…

Item not seen. WorldCat records indicate that this vocal score for unaccompanied mixed voices is printed with the text of the Antiphon to the Virgin Mary, "Salve Regina," in Latin by Herman Contractus (attributed), "interspersed with English words by…

Treats the Old Man of PardT as the "total opposite" of the three revelers: he "embodies or manifests . . . in some manner Christian goodness." He first offers to the revelers a merciful "way to salvation," but when they "flatly reject" it, he justly…

Discussing the use of relics as a site of "institutional control," Malo argues that in works such as CT, writers "use relics as tools" for affirmation or critique of the Church's position as dispenser of grace and healing.

In giving the tale of Constance the form and narrative structure of a saint's life while omitting conventional motivations or explanations, Chaucer has made the Man of Law an inept narrator and has invested the tale with irony and humor.

Addresses medieval writers' uses of saints' lives in Middle English romances of persecuted laywomen. "Le Bone Florence of Rome," "The King of Tars," "Emare," and MLT exemplify the influence of, and variations from, early pious romances. The…

By allowing the pilgrims no comment on the hagiographic discourse of the faceless, feminine "Second Nonne," and by allowing the Prioress to identify with the Word and the bearer of the Word, CT interrogates the doctrines on which it rests:…

Notes several oaths by saints' names in Chaucer.

Clarifies the life and tradition of St. Omobono as a "merchant saint" and "patron of businesspeople and entrepreneurs," incorporating discussion of "early literary representation of the merchant character in Chaucer and Shakespeare." Includes…

Discusses medieval manuscripts that combine materials from Walter Map's "Valerius," the "golden book" of Theophrastus, and excerpts from Jerome's "Adversus Jovinianum," focusing on the seven manuscripts that include the latter two, and showing how…

Demonstrates the "relationship in theme and imagery" between SNPT and CYPT and the "controlling design that links them artistically." Posits that SNT may have been based on a Gnostic version of the Cecilia legend, an alchemical allegory of the…

A translation into Modern English of SNT, based on The Riverside Chaucer (3rd ed.). Includes a short introduction and select bibliography.

Argues that in "Pericles" Shakespeare links Catholicism to English literary history "for the purposes of a complex investigation into the politics of literary history." Allusions to incest in the play, and allusions to Gower and to Chaucer's…

Examines whether NPT manifests a superficial or an intrinsic religiosity and treats NPT--a tale appropriate to the teller--as a religious allegory with Chauntecler as Man or Adam, Pertelote as Eve, and the fox as Devil.