Browse Items (15542 total)

Heffernan considers the clergeon's devotion to Mary's image in relation to historical medieval religious images and the "affective piety" they were produced to evoke among the unlearned.

Compared with their Boccaccian originals, the prayers in Chaucer's KnT are more symmetrical and more concerned with promises to perform duty or to offer sacrifice.

Discusses prayer in various contexts. Chaucer depicts prayer as a means to explore "thorny issues of theology" and often places his prayers in "pagan contexts."

Schooler examines WBPT, KnT, and TC, using speech-act theory to reveal Chaucer's attitudes toward prayer as personal utterance rather than rote activity.

Variants among pragmatic markers-"items which add to the feel of the line or to the organization of the text rather than directly to the sense of the passage"-in the manuscripts of WBP indicate that scribes changed them freely, even subconsciously.…

Investigates how medieval English literature "encouraged women to safeguard their honour by cultivating hypervigilance against the possibility of sexual shame." Includes discussion of women’s virtue and honor during Chaucer's time, with particular…

Summarizes Aristotelian affiliations of women with matter (rather than form) and, following Bourdieu, explores how this affiliation and its "practices" are enacted in Middle English literature. Chaucer engages "contemporary historical practices about…

Examines fiction's role in shaping readers' ethics: the transformation of the narrator encourages and mirrors the transformation of the reader (protrepsis). Discusses medieval texts that theorize themselves and teach the reader how to read, positing…

Describes a group assignment for use in an undergraduate Chaucer classroom, designed to introduce students to basic principles and practice of medieval book production, including paleography and codicology.

Chaucer's characters in CT can be seen to use principles of "speech act theory," especially "flouting" of rules in order to induce a different type of meaning from the discourse. Characters gain power or control by deflecting an attack with…

Studies the ways that chess represents types of political and social order, examining the "Liber de Moribus Hominum et Officiis Nobilium" of Jacobus de Cessolis, "Les echecs amoureux," BD, the "Tale of Beryn," Hoccleve's "Regement of Princes," and…

Curtis summarizes the 1944 movie "A Canterbury Tale," gauging its successes and failures and commenting on the extent to which its sensibilities might be called "Chaucerian."

Denny-Brown assesses the vacillations between sartorial richesse and rudenesse in ClT, examining the gender and class implications of Griselda's dressing, undressing, and redressing and counterpointing Walter's attitudes toward clothing and material…

Translation of CT (except PrT, Mel, and ParsT) in Romanian poetry, based on the text of W. W. Skeat, with b&w illustrations of the pilgrims and the tales by Val Munteanu. The volume reprints with new pagination the 1964 version (Bucharest: Editura…

Argues that Chaucer raises questions in ClT about relations between poverty and the nature of the self, gauging the extent to which Griselda's agency, selflessness, and lack of "things" are factors in Walter's "inhuman" treatment of her, and asking…

Uses "thing theory" to posit that having things conferred subjectivity upon the holder in the Middle Ages. Applies this premise as a way to read Walter's treatment of Griselda in ClT, arguing that "Poor Griselda's selfless submission grows out of a…

Describes various kinds of poverty in England in the second half of the fourteenth century, summarizing economic and social factors and assessing their representation in various works of literature in English and Latin across a range of genres.…

The widow's poverty in NPT indicates the cloistered clergy's failure to practice humility, poverty, and charity. Altering his source materials, Chaucer highlights the contrast between the lifestyle of the Prioress and that of the widow and creates…

Preface by André Crépin. In his representation of gender in its relation to power in LGW, Chaucer departs from the conservative social and literary norms of his age while appearing to adhere to those norms. Chaucer undercuts his overt capitulation…

Chaucer's primary representatives of aristocracy, the Knight and the Squire, reveal differing assumptions about acting within their social stations. Both exhibit confidence through linguistic security, but the Knight's epic reality and narrative…

Summary commentary on the collection of essays, with remarks on maternal grief in PrT, ClT, MLT, and other works, especially Lydgate's "A Lamentacioun of Our Lady Maria."

Numerous Latin insertions on the manuscript suggest that the scribe was translating from a Latin exemplar into English. His notations indicate that he was identifying problems with translation and guarding against them when creating his final…

The electronic "preprints" of "Teaching Chaucer in the Nineties" revealed both the extent to which professors and students have become electronically literate and large disparities in the availability of electronic resources. Ironically, no papers…

WBP dramatizes the emergence of the author in the late Middle Ages as a self actively engaged in creating meaning and in resisting meaning imposed on it by other discourses.

Reading CT through the lens of the postmodern text suggests certain Derridean and Bakhtinian parallels, illuminating the polysemic and polyphonic characteristics of Chaucer's text. Like the postmodernists, Chaucer tends to question authority; to…