Browse Items (16369 total)
Sort by:
Cinematic Illuminations: The Middle Ages on Film
Finke, Laurie A., and Martin B. Schichtman.
Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.
The authors survey a range of popular and artistic films, analyzing uses and presentations of the Middle Ages and assessing the interactions of the modern medium and the ancient material. The book includes commentary on Brian Helgeland's A Knight's…
Circling Back in Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales': On Punctuation, Misreading, and Reader Response
Hanks, D. Thomas,Jr., Arminda Kamphausen, and James Wheeler.
Chaucer Yearbook 3 (1996): 35-53.
Shows how modern punctuation obscures subtleties of Chaucer's poetry, drawing examples from CT. Unpunctuated, Chaucer's verse has a rich poetic syntax, especially in the ways it compels readers to posit one meaning, adjust that meaning to a second…
Citation and Allusion in the Lays of Guillaume de Machaut
Albritton, Benjamin L.
Dissertation Abstracts International A70.04 (2009): n.p.
Considers Machaut's allusions to earlier works in his lays (e.g., "Roman de Fauvel" and "Remede de Fortune") and gauges Machaut's impact on English court poetry, using Chaucer and Froissart as examples.
Cities Without Walls: The Politics of Melancholy from Machaut to Lydgate.
Dunlop, Lynn M.
Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Cambridge, 1997. Dissertation Abstracts International C70.19. Abstract accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global; accessed August 24, 2025.
Item not seen. From the abstract: "argues that the pose of melancholy was a vital framing fiction in later medieval poetry . . . , investigate[s] the medical, philosophical and religious traditions of melancholy, and . . . trace[s] the political role…
City and Country in the Medieval Fabliaux
Fisher, John H.
Medieval Perspectives 1 (1988, for 1986): 1-15.
Medieval comedy is class-based: ridicule of the stupidity of country folk. Modern comedy is psychological: ridicule of the eccentricity of city dwellers. Evolution from class-based to psychological comedy can be traced in the fabliaux and in…
City, Marriage, Tournament: Arts of Rule in Late Medieval Scotland
Fradenburg, Louise Olga.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991.
Chapter 8 discusses differences between aristocratic and lower-class desire in PF, exploring how endless desire establishes sovereignty in the poem. The essay also assesses the relations of the poem with Scots tradition, especially the version of…
City.
Hsy, Jonathan.
Marion Turner, ed. A Handbook of Middle English Studies (Chichester: Wiley, 2013), pp. 315-29.
Considers cities as a "mode of thought" for critical analysis, describing a walk-through pedestrian perspective and a from-on-high omniscient perspective in late-medieval English works that include "The Stores of the Cities," "St. Erkenwald," and HF,…
Civic Voices in English Fables: 'The Owl and the Nightingale' and 'The Nun's Priest's Tale'
Green, Eugene.
AUMLA 108 (2007): 1-32.
Compares "The Owl and the Nightingale" and NPT as the "best beast fables" in Middle English, examining how the diction of each poem helps to create "voice" and thereby engage an audience.
Civilization and Its Ambivalence: Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde'
Stiller, Nikki.
Journal of Evolutionary Psychology 6 (1985): 212-23.
Through courtly love, Boethian philosophy, and Godly intervention, Oedipal fantasies of Freud are played out in TC.
Claiming the Pardoner: Toward a Gay Reading of Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale
Kruger, Steven F.
Exemplaria 6 (1994): 115-39.
Through a historically situated investigation of the Pardoner's possible homeosexuality and its relation to language in PardPT, modern readers can resist Chaucer's (possibly) homophobic intentions, reclaiming and even celebrating the Pardoner's…
Clandestine Marriage and Chaucer's 'Troilus'
Kelly, Henry Ansgar.
Viator 4 (1973): 435-58.
Defines clandestine marriage and describes it as a widespread and well-known phenomenon in fourteenth-century England, even though condemned by the Church. Argues that because the lovers in TC are not Christian, their love is "licit" and not…
Clandestine Marriages in the Late Middle Ages
Thundy, Zacharias P.
Edelgard E. DuBruck, ed. New Images of Women (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1989), pp. 303-20.
Reviews civil and ecclesiastical thinking on clandestine marriage, which was frequent in the Middle Ages. A pattern of this type appears in TC.
Clanvowe's Cuckoo
Chamberlain, David.
David Chamberlain, ed. New Readings of Late Medieval Love Poems (Lanham, Md.; New York; and London: University Press of America, 1993), pp. 41-65.
Long considered a work by Chaucer, "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale" is probably by his friend, Sir John Clanvowe. It is a work of considerable wit and subtlety, presenting a "libidinous narrator," a virtuous cuckoo who embodies Christian truth, and…
Clare Priory, the London Austin Friars and Manuscripts of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
Stubbs, Estelle.
A. J. Minnis, ed. Middle English Poetry: Texts and Traditions. Essays in Honour of Derek Pearsall (Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y.: York Medieval Press, 2001), pp. 17-26.
Names written in manuscripts of CT indicate associations between these manuscripts and a number of Austin friars who were scribes; they also indicate that exemplars of some manuscripts were at Clare Priory. Friars may have copied the manuscripts…
Clashing Stress in the Metres of Old, Middle, and Renaissance English
Cable, Thomas.
C. B. McCully and J. J. Anderson, eds. English Historical Metrics (Cambridge and New York : Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 7-29.
Cable traces a pattern of development in English stress "clashing," affected by stress subordination and stress spacing. Chaucer's "alternating metre has frequent stress subordination, but it is less clear that it makes systematic use of stress…
Class and Gender in Early English Literature: Intersections
Harwood, Britton J.,and Gillian R. Overing, eds.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.
Although criticism on gender and class has suggested their mutual exclusion, this collection of eight essays focuses on their intersections. Three articles on Old English examine the elegies, "Judith," and the "Exeter Book," while those on Middle…
Class Distinction in Chaucer.
Brewer, D. S.
Speculum 43 (1968): 290-305.
Contemplates social status and social mobility in Chaucer's works, considering them in light of contemporaneous attitudes. Focuses on Chaucer's uses of "degree" and the ladder of degree as a "symbol of social mobility," inflected by Chaucer's comic…
Class.
Davis, Isabel.
Marion Turner, ed. A Handbook of Middle English Studies (Chichester: Wiley, 2013), pp. 285-98.
Explores Middle English nuances of a set of related concepts: class, estate, identity, calling, and "clayme," investigating them in light of Pauline distinctions between use and possession and between old and new, discussed by Giorgio Agamben.…
Classic Animal Stories
O'Mara, Lesley, comp.
New York: Arcade, 1991.
An anthology for children of animal tales from Aesop, the Grimm brothers, etc., including a selection from NPT (pp. 51-56; excludes the dream commentary and philosophy), as "retold by" Stephen Corrin. Plates and illustrations by Angel Dominquez.
Classic Crime Stories: The Criminal in Literature.
Liebman, Arthur, ed.
New York: Richards Rosen, 1975.
New York: Richards Rosen, 1975.
An anthology of eighteen examples of short crime fiction, arranged chronologically from Chaucer to Ray Bradbury, with a general Introduction and brief comments introducing the tales. Includes PardT (pp. 3-12) in the prose translation of R. M.…
Classic Love Poems
Morris, Max, ed.
Chichester, U. K.: Summersdale, 2010.
An anthology of lyrics and excerpts, including lines from KnT (1.1074-1122) in Middle English. Earlier versions of the volume were published in 1994, 2001, 2006, and 2008.
Classical and Medieval Elements in Chaucer's 'Troilus'
Windeatt, Barry.
Piero Boitani, ed. The European Tragedy of Troilus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 111-31.
Drawing on classical and medieval sources, Chaucer's TC incorporates multiple genres, each representing its own view of experience. The resulting masterpiece is neither an epic, a tragedy, a romance, a chronicle, a lyric, nor an allegory but a rich…
Classical and Medieval Influences on Chaucer's Fabliau Comedy
Bishop, Kathleen A.
Dissertation Abstracts International 58 (1998): 4643A.
Explores how classical comedy (especially Plautus and Ovid) and medieval elegiac comedies influenced Chaucer's fabliaux and the fabliau elements of ManT, WBP, TC, and the Prologue to the apocryphal Tale of Beryn.
Classical Antiquity in Chaucer's Chivalric Romances
Spearing, A. C.
Susan J. Ridyard, ed. Chivalry, Knighthood, and War in the Middle Ages (Sewanee, Tenn.: University of the South, 1999), pp. 53-73.
Chaucer uses classical, pagan setting as a "screen" on which to "project alternatives to medieval social reality." He capitalizes on the strangeness of presenting classical privacy in TC. In KnT, especially in the temple of Diana, Chaucer explores…
Classical Authors
Medcalf, Stephen.
Roger Ellis, ed. The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English. Volume I: To 1550 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 364-90.
Surveys the tradition of medieval translation from Latin into English, commenting on Continental mediators and awareness of Greek literature. Focuses on translations of Boethius (including Chaucer's) and those of Apollonius of Tyre, treating them as…
