Browse Items (16364 total)

Collection of essays that discuss emerging challenges for scholars and editors in textual studies. For essays pertaining to Chaucer, search for Probable Truth under Alternative Title.

Allusions in SumT to the "silent canon" - the clerical practice of offering the Eucharistic consecration prayers silently - open a window on "lay-clerical relations," exposing the politics governing access to the secrets of the Eucharist. Through its…

Considers transformation "both as a theme and as a methodological problem." In SNT, faith is more "real" than experience, while in CYT, the "real" is not accessible to the Canon. Chaucer experiments with the relationship between the material and…

Explores links between privacy and urban spaces in Fragment 1 of CT, especially MilT, in which each of the major male characters fails to control his own "pryvetee." The article follows Pierre Bourdieu in conceptualizing the practices of privacy as a…

Compares elements of privacy (e.g., "access, intimacy, and withdrawal") in official documents and records to canonical literary works including TC, "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," and Malory.

In MilT, the house and the space around it symbolize both the tale itself and the principal characters. The top floor represents the "heavenly" sphere where the flood is predicted and awaited; the middle, or "earthly," level is Alison's bedroom; and…

MilT serves as a corrective to KnT (where chaos in effect breaks down order) by exceeding the typical symmetry of the fabliau (a genre in which order properly has no part). Departing from the "pryvete" set up in its many senses, MilT develops and…

Surveys medieval notions and representations of privacy in relation to various religious and devotional practices, study, gardening, social spaces, and the demise of community. Comments recurrently on Chaucer's depictions of solitude, focusing on his…

Reprint of Japanese translation of TC with notes and commentary, based on F. N. Robinson's edition. First published in 1948.

Reconsiders questions of the composition and occasion of PrT (here titled "Clergeon") before Chaucer incorporated it into the CT, arguing on biographical, stylistic, and liturgical grounds that Chaucer may have originally composed the poem as early…

Echard studies the "postmedieval life of medieval texts" as they are embodied in material form, exploring strategies for representing the authenticity of the texts and for reimagining them for new audiences. The book includes chapters on design…

Explores why Chaucer was more marketable than either Gower or Lydgate in sixteenth-century England: Chaucer's variety, flexibility, and malleability made him more adaptable to various publics and therefore more attractive to early printers than other…

Manuscripts used as copy by printers are scarce. An examination of MS Bodley 638 reveals both codicological and textual evidence that discloses the printers' intentions. The 1530 edition of PF, used by Robert Copland, was established from this…

Though only three of the twenty-four poems attributed to the poet in John Stowe's "Chaucer" of 1561 are now accepted as genuine, comparative study of the mss used reveals remarkable substantive accuracy in the text of this early edition.

Although Caxton, Thynne, and Speght use comparable techniques to establish Chaucer's works by collating, restoring, and emending texts, their editions reveal various and individual methods.

Analyzing the impact of print on already-existing ideas of authorship, Gillespie argues "that the medieval author was a mechanism for ordering the new meanings of texts in print," even when the understanding of that author was a result, or…

In adapting the outdated motif of the medieval romance of dreaming of a fairy queen from Chaucer's Thop, Spenser blends naiveté and sophistication.

Surveys efforts to popularize CT through media (television, audio recordings, stage, and animation), commenting most extensively on the 2003 BBC television series.

Chaucer emphasizes the phallic deity Priapus as a figure of frustration in PF. He does not try to abolish or deify the sexual passion Priapus represents. Priapus and the noble suitors may represent unproductive extremes of a more balanced position…

Argues that the 1990 film Pretty Woman is understandable as an analogue to medieval Fair Unknown romances and that, like WBT, the film affirms and inverts the ideology of romance through self-conscious nostalgia.

Argues that sodomy in medieval literature must be understood as an "unspecified plurality of acts and intentions," which includes women as well as men. Female sodomy occupies the "silent place in the discourse" that must be acknowledged in modern…

Argues for using "a Bernardine anagogical lens" to assess theological depth in CT and "Piers Plowman," and traces allusions and references to Bernard of Clairvaux in "Piers," ParsT, and the "Prick of Conscience.."

Establishes a link between the "preamble" in WBP and the sermon genre.

Analyzes parallel sections of text from William Caxton's two editions of CT set by the same compositor--Mel and ParsT, NPT and ManT--comparing practices in prose tales and verse tales, and also comparing the practices of the compositor of Richard…

Analyzes Edward Burne-Jones's illustrations of Rom in the Kelmscott Chaucer, arguing that they--and especially the final illustration of the poem--epitomize many of Burne-Jones's experiences with and attitudes toward books, book history, and the…