Browse Items (15542 total)

Explores the "potential value and pitfalls of reading the literature and drama of this period 'historically.'" Chapter 6 addresses Chaucer and argues that Absolon "defies categorization," but seems to have origins in popular religion and medieval…

Abridged version of a portion of Dinshaw's Chaucer's Sexual Politics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), pp. 28-64.

Reads PhyT as a conflict between Jewish literal hermeneutics and a more metaphorical Christian reading of faith.

If reading is a transformative act, then Griselda's unwavering "reading" of Walter as a loving husband ultimately transforms him so that Walter's will conforms with hers. Thus, her association with the Clerk (especially as aligned against the…

Argues that humor and multiple points of view make Chaucer's work essential reading in the "polemical atmosphere" of the present time. Contends that readers must pay careful attention when interpreting Chaucer's frequent ambiguities, reversals, and…

Assesses the "textual landscapes and ecological details" in various late-medieval British romances, including discussion of seaside and shipwreck in MLT and in Gower's analogous Tale of Constance "as a simultaneously inviting and threatening space…

Includes discussion of "Chaucer's use of the bestiary to create his character of the Pardoner," relying on "the reader's association of animal features with morality to convey its meaning" and structuring PardPT to incorporate "the generic components…

Examines desire and intimacy in TC and "reinterprets the depiction of pleasure" in the poem, "particularly the bed scene in Book III, through an allegorical reading of medieval and modern concepts of desire."

Presents a two-part re-enactment of TC 2.78-119 in Middle English, with modern English sub-titles and production notes. Part I dramatizes the scene; Part II "recreates how medieval audiences would have experienced Chaucer's poem." Available on…

In the context of a broader discussion of late-medieval depictions of people reading, Driver mentions illustrations that depict Chaucer reading. Fourteen illustrations

Analysis of Becket reliquaries made in Limoges, including commentary on the role of the city and its cathedral in Becket's experience and in CT (as an elusive destination).

Alceste's request for a "legend" of good women and reference to Queen Anne combine to establish the audience of LGW, raising questions about the gender ideology of saints' legends and resisting the "misogynist antiphrasis" recurrent in antifeminist…

Hodges "reads" Griselda's "sartorial transformation[s]" in light of detailed knowledge of fourteenth-century material culture. For instance, the fact that a smock could be made of plain linen or embroidered silk, or that it was the innermost of many…

Haas examines Th as the "unstable center" of Fragment 7, especially in its parodies of the "problems of mercantile culture" initiated in ShT: money and sexuality.

Simultaneously publishes the essays that appear in "Huntington Library Quarterly" 58:1 (1996).

Considers moral casuistry in Gower and CT, arguing that Chaucer and Gower pose for the reader's discovery "practical precepts" that rely on the "rhetoric of exemplarity and the deliberation of readers," rather than relying on hard-and-fast religious…

Studies a late medieval manuscript, San Marino, Huntington Library, HM 144 (c. 1500), which is a compilation of works chosen for their devotional and/or ethical content. Uses Mel to show how the scribe—by omitting portions of a text and interpolating…

Examines Wycliffite sermons and the opposing views of William Thorpe and Nicholas Love to compare Lollard and orthodox views of narrative and of the individual. Chaucer's awareness of the conflict, his refusal to take sides, and the futility of…

Argues that ClT, using "distinctively Gowerian terms" such as "corage" and "visage," is Chaucer's response to Gower's perceived challenge at the conclusion of the "Confessio Amantis" for Chaucer "to drop his well-known political reticence and take a…

Studies medieval reading of verse manuscripts and includes analysis of canonical Middle English verse texts, such as works by Chaucer, Gower, Hoccleve, and Lydgate, as well as lesser-known fourteenth-century northern religious manuscripts. Argues…

Analyzes history of emotions, phenomenology, and gender theory, and specifically discusses "feminine embodiment and the bodily expressions of love" in TC and LGW.

Claims that "dreamlore and other prognosticative arts in the Harley Scribe's library" make the Harley Scribe "somewhat of a proto-type for Chaucer's clerks and squires”"in CT; focuses on Chaunticleer in NPT and the Clerk in ClT.

Six essays by various authors on dreams in medieval and early modern literature. For four essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Reading Dreams under Alternative Title.

Assesses the status of CT and three eighteenth-century novels as "transitional texts" between orality and literacy, examining such features as voicing, framing devices, and insecurity about the social and moral roles of the texts.

Surveys understandings of Dido--e.g., historical, Virgilian, Ovidian--and examines what her medieval presentations tell us about intertextual relations, gender attitudes, and the "reading positions" of various medieval authors, including Chaucer,…