Browse Items (16035 total)

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…

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,…

Representations of Mary in medieval literature are paradoxical, often underscored by her opposition to Eve. MLT and the hagiography Seinte Marherete seek to present a unified view of Mary but ultimately fail; WBPT and Pearl are more sensitive to the…

Despite their empirical basis, the conclusions Linne R. Mooney draws regarding Adam Pinkhurst's relationship to Chaucer ultimately depend on literary evidence, which should remind scholars that while particular communities of readers make a work…

Presents a brief biography of Chaucer and an overview of Chaucerian criticism before discussing challenges in compiling a Chaucer edition for modern readers. Includes direct commentary on TC and CT.

Argues that MkT models "rumination," a reading method used by monks. Includes close reading of the form and content of specific lines. Also claims ABC as a model for monastic reading techniques because it is fragmented, repetitive, monologic, and…

Guide to pronouncing the Latin words and phrases in CT, presented in International Phonetic Alphabet; includes a brief introduction on historical phonology.

Reader theory helps us better appreciate LGW: the schema trust/doubt/questioning/self-reliance reveals subtle complexities in the relationships among reader, poet, and moral and literary traditions.

Carl Lindahl's hypothesis (Earnest Games, SAC 11 [1989], no. 135) of folkloric approaches to Chaucer oversimplifies and stereotypes the poet's art. Such readings, which detract from close reading, "have a potentially distorting effect."

Examines Chaucer's original characterization of Calkas through the ways it diverges from the representation of this character in earlier versions. Chaucer presents him as a human individual whose words are not necessarily to be trusted, introducing…

Japanese translation of BD, with introduction and notes by Haruo Harada. Includes six essays by various scholars.
For individual essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Reading Chaucer's Book of the Duchess under Alternative Title.

Begins with attempts to position Chaucer, TC, and the reading subject (the author himself ), and reads the Prologue and Epilogue of TC in literary, historical, and anthropological terms. In Japanese.

NPT can best be approached by focusing on form and style rather than on theme and narrator. Attempting to define a central theme or message is frustrated by the Tale's allusive richness and multiplicity of perspectives, and the narrator is largely…