Browse Items (16012 total)

Examines depictions of masculine attractiveness in medieval romances, including TC. Influenced by rhetorical and courtly traditions, such depictions (and parallel cautions against seduction) emphasize moral and social qualities rather than personal…

Revised version of "The Second Nun's Tale," first published in C. David Benson and Elizabeth Robertson, eds. Chaucer's Religious Tales (Cambridge: Brewer, 1990).

Explores the "powerlessness of the voiceless" in ManPT, focusing on Phebus's wife, who has no voice in the Tale, in contrast with the speaking crow whose voice is taken from him and the ventriloquized mother of the Manciple. Designed for pedagogical…

In his modernization of WBT, John Dryden diminishes the "egalitarian" views of Chaucer's original and presents an outlook that is distinctly less feminist.

A collection of ten feminist essays focusing on representations of the physical body in medieval literature and their sociopolitical importance. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Feminist Approaches to the Body in Medieval Literature…

Argues that Jill Mann's approach to Chaucer's treatment of women is more helpful for classroom application than is Elaine Hansen's.

Asks to what extent CT and Boccaccio's "Decameron" advocate "women's equality," exploring female laughter in these works, and focusing on Boccaccio's Pampinea and on the Wife of Bath as a "comic performer who has an intent to play."

Ten essays by various hands, including an introduction by the editors, plus previously published pieces by Mary Carruthers (with a new Afterword), Sheila Delany, and Susan Schibanoff. Topics include Christine de Pizan, Margery Kempe, "Piers Plowman,"…

Recent feminist study of the early Christian movement reveals that women enjoyed a high degree of authority and autonomy. Read against this background, SNT exhibits the changed status of women by the late fourteenth century.

Examines "the role of women in literary texts as counselors to kings" in late medieval England, assessing works by Chaucer (LGW and Mel), John Gower, and Stephen Scrope.

Argues that in "Life of Our Lady" and "Life of Saint Margaret" John Lydgate uses the "paradoxical image" of the virginal and fecund "sanctified female body" to distance himself "from the patriarchal Chaucerian poetic model" and assert that his…

A new version of Mann's book "Geoffrey Chaucer" (1991), with expanded references, footnotes, and bibliography. A new preface (pp. vii-xix) sketches developments in "Chaucerian gender studies" since c. 1990 and argues that Chaucer's exploration of…

Collection of essays in French and English that examine factual and fictive female pilgrims, focusing on their representation in spiritual and courtly literature. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Femmes et pèlerinages under…

The warnings in ParsT against contraceptive methods are literary evidence that women successfully limited fertility in the late Middle Ages.

Reviews, by way of the anthropological studies of Turner and van Gennep, the effects of pilgrimage on the social behavior of the pilgrims in CT. Pilgrimage removes them from the center of normative social behavior: it homogenizes social rank, blurs…

Legal terminology pertaining to land law is dense in fragments 1 and 2 of CT and in TC. Chaucer used the terms in informed ways and expected his audience to be familiar with their implications.

Explores the strategies and effects of Chaucer's self-aware affirmations in CT of the work's "status as fiction," commenting on the first-person narrator's functions (in contrast with those in Dante) and tracing the ironies generated by tensions…

Howard compares TC with Il Filostrato and CT with Decameron, focusing on how Chaucer adapts Boccaccio's uses of conventions to engage his audience. In Boccaccio, fiction enables the audience to escape from a contemptible world, whereas Chaucer--more…

Eleven Japanese essays, three English essays, and one translation in Japanese. Focusing on literary and philological traditions, the essays contribute to study of Chaucer, Langland, and Gower. The Japanese translation is of De descriptione temporum,…

Arranged in districts; includes brief references to Chaucer and his works, e.g., Cheapside (CkT), south of the Thames (CT), Aldgate (Chaucer's residence), etc.

Discusses how authors, from Chaucer to C. S. Lewis, are influenced by the "flexible tradition" of religious stories. Chapter 1 analyzes how Chaucer reveals understanding of Christian doctrine in WBT.

TC is used (along with later works) to draw conclusions about authorial self-consciousness. There are applications to the "persona" and the author's fictionalization of his audience.

The various fictional levels in CT result in a dialectic relationship between voice and genre, especially pronounced in Fragment D.

Considers TC, MLT, and LGW in the larger context of the idea of "raptus" (rape or abduction) and its implications for national and other borders and for female status.

Outlines the mixture of authorial deference and criticism within a mostly English mirror-for-princes tradition, from the "Secretum secretorum" to Machiavelli. Historicizes the works of James Yonge, John Gower, and Thomas Hoccleve within particular…