Browse Items (16035 total)

Byron-Davies, Justin M.   Revelation and the Apocalypse in Late Medieval Literature: The Writings of Julian of Norwich and William Langland (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2020), pp. 130-73.
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.

Taavitsainen, Irma.   Geoffrey Lester, ed. Chaucer in Perspective: Middle English Essays in Honour of Norman Blake (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), pp. 218-34.
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…

Vaughan, Míceál F.   Medium Ævum 75 (2006): 103-22.
Investigates the anti-Lancastrian sentiments underlying Gascoigne's account of Chaucer's "deathbed repentance for his literary sins" in Ret.

Eliason, Norman E.   Names 21 (1973): 137-52.
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…

Allen, Mark Edward.   Dissertation Abstracts International 43 (1982): 784A.
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, Hideshi.   Hiroshima Studies in English Language and Literature 43 (1988): 1-15.
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.

Ellis, Roger.   Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 74 (1992): 121-39.
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.

Louis, Margot Kathleen.   Farnham, U.K.: Ashgate, 2009.
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."

Patterson, Lee.   Studies in the Age of Chaucer 15 (1993): 25-57.
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…

Scattergood, V. J.   Chaucer Review 19 (1984): 14-23.
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.

Matthews, David.   Marion Turner, ed. A Handbook of Middle English Studies (Chichester: Wiley, 2013), pp. 253-66.
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,…

Dean, Paul.   Essays in Criticism 50.2: 125-44, 2000.
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…

Calabrese, Michael.   TSLL 44 : 66-91, 2002.
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…

Pigg, Daniel F.   Peter G. Beidler, ed. Masculinities in Chaucer: Approaches to Maleness in the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde (Cambridge; and Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 1998), pp. 53-61.
Connects the violence implicit in the performance of the Tale with physical violence and argues that RvT portrays the perversion of masculine power.

Taylor, Candace Hull.   Mark Cruse, ed. Performance and Theatricality in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance ([Turnhout]: Brepols, 2018), pp. 17-34.
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, Carolyn P.   Turnhout, Belgium : Brepols, 2006.
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…

Kempf, Elisabeth.   Boston, Mass.: De Gruyter, 2017.
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…

Nolan, Maura.   Susan Yager and Elise E. Morse-Gagné, eds. Interpretation and Performance: Essays for Alan Gaylord (Provo, UT: Chaucer Studio Press, 2013), pp. 97-114.
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…

Keller, William R.   Eva von Contzen and James Simpson, eds. Enlistment: Lists in Medieval and Early Modern Literature (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2022), pp. 135-53.
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, Catherine.   JMEMSt 32 : 269-303, 2002.
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…

Beidler, Peter G.   Susan Yager and Elise E. Morse-Gagné, eds. Interpretation and Performance: Essays for Alan Gaylord (Provo, UT: Chaucer Studio Press, 2013), pp. 149-68.
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…

Crocker, Holly A.   Chaucer Review 38 : 178-98, 2003.
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…

Matsuda, Takami   Chaucer Review 51.4 (2016): 436-52.
Explores how memory functions in contrition and confession in ParsT.

Blandeau, Agnès.   Sandra Gorgievski and Xavier Leroux, eds. Le Moyen Âge mis en scène: Perspectives contemporaines. Babel, no. 15. [Toulon]: Université du Sud Toulon-Var, Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines, 2007, pp. 17-31.
Blandeau explores how three films capture the spirit if not the letter of CT.

Gallacher, Patrick J.   Chaucer Review 18 (1983): 38-48.
Views MilT in context of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's theories on perception, immanence, and transcendence.
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