Browse Items (16035 total)

Opens with brief contrasts between the uses of dream vision in NPT, Gower's "Vox clamantis," and Langland's "Piers Plowman" before examining at greater length Langland’s use of literary techniques that echo the Bible.

Pragmatic analysis of linguistic features that produce "personal affect" in several of the CT. Uses features such as exclamations, oaths, and aspects of proximity and reader involvement to describe characterizations of the Knight, the Prioress, the…

Investigates the anti-Lancastrian sentiments underlying Gascoigne's account of Chaucer's "deathbed repentance for his literary sins" in Ret.

Surveys the uses of personal names of the Canterbury pilgrims and of the major characters in the tales, commenting on names adapted from sources, common names, diminutives and name variants, given names and surnames, name-play, the relative paucity…

Assesses character names in works "from 'Beowulf' to Robert Henryson, tracing patterns in onomastic function, language philosophy, and literary form." Includes discussion of names from HF, TC, and CT.

Ono examines Chaucer's personal and impersonal uses of the verbs "meten" and "dremen" to refer to dreams. The personal use emerged in the fourteenth century.

Examines the "voices" of the narrators of SNT, MerT, and WBP. In understanding voices, it is important to remember two levels: the immediate and the inherited past. The three tales exhibit plain speaking in different ways.

Includes comments on Proserpyna in MerT as equivalent to the Wife of Bath and on the Proserpyna/Pluto exchange as an intertwining of the classics and Christian heritage, particularly "Judeo-Christian antifeminism."

Assesses alchemy as a verbal and social practice in Chaucer's day, arguing that alchemical discourse raised with particular intensity the problem of the verbal representation of truth; alchemical study helped undermine the clerical monopoly on…

The protagonist of CkT has antecedents, from both society and literature, that permit one to extrapolate details the Cook might have used: trickery, age, and criticism of contemporary mores.

Considers the value and possible necessity of periodization in history and literary history, focusing on particular difficulties in dealing with the use of "middle" in "Middle Ages" and "Middle English," and arguing that treatments of Chaucer, Gower,…

Assesses the genre, fictional self-consciousness, and religious elements of "Pericles," suggesting that Chaucer influenced Shakespeare's decision to include the character Gower onstage throughout the play, an aspect of its literary…

Focusing on the relationship between images of violence in PrT and real history, critics seek to redress history's ills. Recent readings reflect professional and institutional assumptions. While not "de-historicizing" PrT, critics may…

Connects the violence implicit in the performance of the Tale with physical violence and argues that RvT portrays the perversion of masculine power.

Considers the performative aspects of Prudence as an allegorical figure in "Sawles Warde," where she functions as a dramatic "expositor," and in Mel, where she offers "commentary . . . on reading, misreading, and the limits of wisdom when it is…

Collette surveys literary and historical evidence that women in the Anglo-French tradition played the role of mediator, i.e., someone who "negotiates, bridges, and unites differences"--evidence of the "ideology and practice of women's agency" in the…

Examines questions of autobiography, authorship, legacy, and the "Fürstenspiegel" genre in Thomas Hoccleve's "Regiment of Princes," with attention to its manuscript presentations and to its images of Chaucer and of Hoccleve himself, discussing the…

Lydgate's meter differs from Chaucer's for several reasons, but their differences have been exaggerated by editorial practices. When performed, the "Lydgate" or "broken-backed" line emerges as an aesthetic choice. The broken-backed line characterizes…

Examines the role of lists, themes of order and disorder, epistemology and poetics, and tensions between household economy and monetized mercantile accretion (chremastistics) in Douglas's "Palice of Honour" as a response to similar concerns in…

Sanok assesses the urban performances of virgin martyr and Marian plays and the "exemplarity" of female saints' legends, examining how authorities sought to contain or appropriate the subversive potential of female piety. Considers SNT and how the…

Demonstration and performance, accepted aspects of classroom practice, can make academic conference presentations more memorable. Examples of performative practice include an enacted battle in KnT, created costumes illustrating the Wife of Bath's…

The comedy in MerT is produced by May herself, whose "conduct demonstrates that the feminine passivity upon which the masculine performance of agency depends is of course an act." May exposes the ridiculous nature of all claims to masculine…

Explores how memory functions in contrition and confession in ParsT.

Blandeau explores how three films capture the spirit if not the letter of CT.

Views MilT in context of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's theories on perception, immanence, and transcendence.