Browse Items (16035 total)

Analyzes MilT "using a theory of narrative analogous with transformational grammar," which assumes not merely a "grammar of narrative" but also "narrative competence," or ability of the reader or hearer to understand. Edden explores the function of…

Analyzes how GP and the dramatic links in CT affect reader interest and narrative. Suggests that the Clerk misreads allegory for mimesis and critiques Petrachan poetics and the narrowness of the moral, exemplary tales.

Reviews scholarship on the case of Chaucer and Cecilia Chaumpaigne, focusing on the meaning of raptus. Discusses recent treatments of rape as trope and explores its social and legal implications in medieval texts.

Warburton explores historical and literary connections between notions of female "goodness" and ability to be raped, examining the discourse of Cecily Chaumpaigne's accusation of rape and the tales of Lucretia and Philomela in LGW. The afterword,…

The dreamer/narrator's account of the Black Knight and Lady White in BD textualizes their discursive performances, revealing them to be institutionalized discourses desired by the narrator and his audience. The work provides interpretive closure…

Summarizes performance features of WBP (echoes of preaching, animal imagery, range of emotion, entertainment value) appropriate to fourteenth-century encounters with the text as an aural experience.

Explores the "creative power of literary tradition" in medieval and contemporary works. Includes a chapter on TC and Boccaccio's "Il filostrato."

Examines "the paratextual, literary, historical, and physical ways print books serve as brokers of authority," including discussion of how William Caxton, in his editions of Chaucer, "inaugurates the printer as a necessary intermediary between the…

Responding to the growing custom of reading silently, Chaucer focuses on the dilemma that there can be no interpretation without will but that the use of will can lead to prejudiced, subjective interpretations. The birds cannot communicate, but the…

Examines how rape narratives explore relationships between literary conventions and the erotic, especially female erotic masochism, homosocial attraction, and the nexus of desire and abject sexuality.

A survey of Middle English literature, designed to accompany the author's anthology "A Book of Middle English" (with J. A. Burrow; 3rd ed., 2005). Treats six topics: the English language; manuscripts, scribes, and audiences; literature and society,…

Twenty essays by various authors and a bibliography of Hanning's publications. The essays are divided into three sections: history and romance, Chaucer's works, and Italian contexts. For nine essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Reading…

While attempting to locate courtesy literature in a larger literary milieu, examines Machaut and BD on the way to an examination of Langland.

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…