Browse Items (16364 total)

This collection of essays by various authors addresses the rivalry and tension among characters, themes, styles, and genres in CT.
For individual essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Rebels and Rivals under Alternative Title.

Argues that the widow Ranter of Aphra Behn's "The Widow Ranter; or, The History of Bacon in Virginia" is "a 'reincarnation' of Chaucer's Wife of Bath in the New [W]orld." Behn's play "translates the wife . . . to colonial Virginia to negotiate both…

Troilus ultimately travels to the ninth--not the eighth--sphere at the end of TC, a place ripe with "symbolic valence," reinforcing Chaucer's narrative focus on constant change and the ambiguity that comes with it.

Clarifies the "centrality and complexities" of political and ethical law discourse in late medieval England, showing how it is used in works by Thomas Usk and how in TC and KnT Chaucer "questions the view that the natural law is an unshakeable…

Examines "the paradigm of consoler-consolation-consolee" in The Consolation of Philosophy, Roman de la Rose, Remede de Fortune, and TC. The Consolation is "sub-text or perhaps super-text." The other texts mediate in Chaucer's adaptation of…

Argues the moral supremacy of the Reason in Jean de Meun's "Roman de la Rose."

Interprets the Canon of CYP as "one of the men of Antichrist," and examines the sustained opposition of CYPT and SNPT, emphasizing their contrasting depictions of reason and revelation as ways of knowing.

John the cuckolded carpenter in MilT, delights in a simple faith which makes star-gazing unnecessary. The NPT revolves around the problem of translating intuitive knowledge into action. In both modern and medieval images of the universe,searching…

Building on recent studies related to space and epistemology, this study argues that Chaucer, as well as the "Pearl"-poet and author of "The Cloud of Unknowing," take a pedagogical stance in their writing and "proffer a space from which or by means…

Distinguishes between "anti-Judaism" and "anti-Semitism," and reads the former as a motif that combines with other devices to produce the excessive pathos of PrT, a form of late-medieval emotional intensity.

Chaucer's power lies particularly in the way he adapted and altered his sources and mirrored the world around him.

The chaos in HF is partly the result of multiple interpretations of texts and massive disagreement among the characters. Geffrey may curse the individual who "misinterprets" his writing, but he is partly joking. Only those authors whose texts are…

Is PF realist or nominalist? Ultimately, the poem's debate and epistemological investigation of the two positions is more conducive to reader participation than a conclusive ending would have been.

Two major sources of the realism in TC are the Platonic cosmic fables (e.g., the "Boece") and the arts of love or handbooks for lovers, particularly the "Pamphilus." The fables would seem far removed from realism; however, their writers' concern…

Seventeen previously published essays and excerpts, accompanied by an introduction, a biography, a chronology, and a brief bibliography intended for student use. Contributors include Donald Howard (on structure and on social rank), Glending Olson (on…

Begins with an introduction to Spearing's place in scholarship and situates him in the wider context of English and American approaches to texts. Follows with a chronological bibliography of Spearing's published work. This collection of essays is…

Twenty-five essays by various contributors, addressing individual works or genres and designed for "students undertaking courses in Old and Middle English." The book includes recurrent references to Chaucer's works. For two essays that pertain to his…

By eclectic approaches that borrow techniques from "modern literary theory, film analysis, sociolinguistics, and social anthropology" and that use historical views of medieval ideas and practice, Spearing illuminates a number of medieval poems,…

Twelve essays, by various authors, from the Third Conference on Romance in England, held March-April 1992 at the University of Bristol. Topics include generic definition; textual transmission; audience reception; romance and emergent nationalism;…

Zieman examines the "liturgical literacy" of medieval nuns, exploring the extent to which they may have understood Latin texts that they performed. PrT presents "singing explicitly characterized as illiterate" as "the purest form of piety"; SNT…

Examines the life, tomb, and library of Alice Chaucer--granddaughter of the poet--to suggest how we might reconstruct a women's literary culture of the fifteenth century. Alice's literary taste was influenced by her father, Thomas Chaucer; by the…

Explores the influence of Anne of Bohemia, wife and consort of King Richard II, on Chaucer and his contemporaries. Proposes that Anne of Bohemia was a "possible female patron and reader" of Chaucer's texts. Focuses on PrT, SNT, KnT, WBT, and LGW.

Chaucer and Gower distance themselves from French influence in the 1380s and 1390s as a way to criticize Richard's "predilection for French literature" and to train their readers to read and interpret.

A collection of nineteen essays previously published by the author, eight on Chaucer.

Describes a pedagogy and practice of reading PrT in light of the historical pogrom in Prague (1387), a Latin narrative of the pogrom ("Passio Judeorum Pragensium"), a Czech-and-Latin fragmentary play entitled "Ungentarius" (Ointment Seller), and…