Browse Items (15542 total)

Surveys medieval commentary on women's enjoyment of sex, noting that sexual pleasure distinguishes Alisoun's marriage to Jankyn in WBP--a result of Jankyn's ability to read his wife's body like a text. Niebrzydowski contrasts Alisoun's sexual…

Reads Th and its narrator's dialogue with the Host as Chaucer's commentary on gender, vernacularity, and the public role of the poet in his contemporary world.

Dream poems by Machaut, Froissart, and Chaucer share not only the dream frame device but also historical-political content communicated in the language of love poetry. Love, war, and politics combined show change and a model of order.

In both HF and LGW Chaucer adapts the story of Dido in a way that does not exclusively privilege Virgil's text. Though Gavin Douglas objects to Chaucer's "Legend of Dido" in his translation of the "Aeneid" (providing a humanistic model of reading…

Root draws on selected primary and secondary sources to illustrate that WBP was influenced by the doctrine of mandatory confession decreed by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215.

Reads LGW as an ironic, comic poem that offers a positive view of women in LGWP and in the legends themselves.

Analysis of WBPT, FrT, SumT, ClT, FranT and Ret indicates that Chaucer was "a realist with regard to religion and a nominalist with regard to language and epistemological issues."

The reflexive "maken" ("to pretend") is studied in a discussion of the conscience of the Prioress, the Parson, the Pardoner, Griselda, Friar John, and the Wife of Bath. "Spiced conscience" means "tender feeling," or "hypocritical religiosity."

Identifies the ways in which various genre terms are used in Middle English narratives about Troy, including TC where "tragedie" is consistently applied to the narrative. Comments on Latin and French usage and on terms applied to Chaucer's other…

Considers the Franklin's interruption of the Squire in Part 4 of CT to be a "brilliant dramatic vignette" that develops the characterizations of the Squire, Franklin, and Host.

Dorigen of FranT is "more important as a figure that reflects back on men and their desires than as a distinct character in herself." Englade applies Georges Bataille's "expenditure" theory to show that there is "no place for Dorigen within the bonds…

A psychoanalytic analysis suggesting parallels between the "scopophilic" instinct represented in TC and the "extreme intertextuality" of the poem. Both are forms of the Oedipal complex whereby Criseyde, although she is finally unknowable, is for…

Chaucer's handling of the dreamer-narrator of BD proves sensitive and subtle in its exploration of genre, irony, tension, and artistic capability; the poem foreshadows Chaucer's later mastery.

Considering such works as "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida," and PardPT, the author identifies finitude and nothingness as the roots of despair in late medieval and early modern works, as well as in modern…

Assesses Spenser's appeal to Chaucer and his continuation of SqT as an aspect of the Renaissance poet's doubt about his place in English poetry. Chaucer "revels in the multiplication of doubt," but Spenser sought to work out his doubts about his…

Certain ribald but spurious lines added to the pear-tree episode and printed by Caxton in 1478 helped to shape readers' attitudes toward Chaucer for three centuries, until Tyrwhitt removed them in 1775. The lines are probably the work of a scribe…

NPT illustrates the alternation of sexual dominance in CT. The Priest among his nuns is like Chanticleer, "paragon des phallocrates," among his wives. But neither maintains dominance. Moreover, in NPT, as in CT as a whole, questions of sexual…

Mel and Th function together to create a game that shows and explores how author and audience together manipulate and receive language in the creation of a text.

Discusses monastic libraries and scribal communities where texts could be "copied and translated without repercussions behind the monastic walls of England." Also reveals how demand for vernacular writing increased in female convents. Section 2,…

Both Chaucer and Spenser make use of the qualified or unresolved ending. The outer limit of Chaucer's work is doctrine. Spenser seems to hold out hope for absolute vision.

Intertextual references in MerT invite recourse to medieval commentators on the Song of Solomon.

Surveys philosophical feasts or "lunches" (symposia) in classical literature and traces the motif in Old and Middle English texts, commenting on the "metaphorical reality of Chaucer's non-existing banquet"--the Host's promised meal.

Reviews Augustinian criticism of R. P. Miller, B. F. Huppé, Lee W. Patterson, G. L. Kittridge, and D. W. Robertson. The Pardoner criticizes the church that licenses him for its follies and corruption. His performance is considered a "social gaffe,…

In ShT money corrupts marriage and brotherhood, but it effects a relationship between the merchant and his wife. Hence money is both good and evil, but its effects are unpredictable.

By paying attention to apocryphal texts such as "The Plowman's Tale," readers can understand the appeal of continuations of CT. As CT is an amorphous text, reconsidering medieval writers and readers of apocrypha helps scholars rethink the potential…