Browse Items (16035 total)

Briefly invokes Chaucer, noting Pasolini's 1971 film, "The Canterbury Tales," and its adaptation of Chaucer's work to highlight increasing cultural degradation as works are transmitted.

Considers the "influence of the thirteenth-century Pseudo-Boethian forgery 'De Disciplina Scolarium' on medieval understandings of Boethius." Includes "'Bitwixen game and ernest': Contrary Boethianism in TC," which examines the "contraries" of the…

Examines adaptations of conventional depictions of change in literary characters--in works by Chrétien de Troyes, Marie de France, and Benoît de Sainte-Maure. Contrasts the change in Benoît's Briseida with that in Chaucer's Criseyde, focusing…

Cannon summarizes medieval theories of literary form, including that of Geoffrey of Vinsauf, as adapted by Chaucer in TC. Applies the theories to various works in Middle English.

Uses Pauline "theo-poetics of circumcision" to explore circumcision and "uncircumcision" as hermeneutic tropes, focusing on allegoresis and amplification, and analyzing queerly Augustine's Boy with a Long Foreskin" (from "De Genesi ad litteram");…

A close reading of the Envoy to ClT underscores Chaucer's brilliant ambiguity and makes the assigning of it to a single speaker impossible.

Structure and theme of the Vision are established not only by the "Roman de la Rose" but by Latin poems: (1) visionary setting and (2) questing love-debate for a solution to the turmoil resolved (or unresolved) at (3) a Court of Love. Chaucer's…

Gower's "Confessio" and Chaucer's CT reflect a process of mediation in which problematic social realities are restated or reconceived. The two writers treat two medieval aesthetics, unity-in-diversity and hierarchies, though Chaucer encourages…

An explication of NPT, analyzing it within its historical context.

Considers John Metham's "sonnet," which presents the first sonnet-like form in English. While disputing that Metham’s poem should be viewed as the first sonnet in English, its similarities and interpretations help to advance considerations about…

The Levi-Strauss formula for the structure of myth can be applied to analogues of ShT to illuminate disputed interpretations. In a list of similar actions in columns, not chronological, the ShT shows eight implications of the Levi-Strauss formula.

Considers lyric poems "not as statements but as imitation of statements," and includes discussion of the "Brooch of Thebes" (i.e., Chaucer's Mars and Ven). Also comments on Chaucer's relations with Eustace Deschmaps and Oton de Grandson.

Considers WBPT and SNPT, along with woman writers of the 13th-15th centuries, as part of the development of a female "subject consciousness." Also examines Grisilde in ClT.

Presents the role of pity as an "essential virtue" that does not negate suffering in TC; claims that Chaucer shifts language as a way to understand the "complex social and subjective position of pity" in TC.

Reads the relations between the planetary event and perspectives on it in Mars as analogous to those between form and interpretation in new formalist literary analysis. In Mars the celestial motion of the geocentric universe is subject to the…

Using ClT and other texts, looks at the intersection of asceticism and secular lifestyles.

Considers Spenser's perception of Chaucer as inspiration, influence, and creator whose creations have themselves been mediated by other writers and society.

Examines three interiors within HF, and the use of the "catalogue" as a way of articulating and revealing the spatial relationships within the poem. Compares the "navigation of space" in HF to classical and medieval techniques of a "memory palace."

Argues that "the vernacular literature of late medieval England contributes importantly to the theorizing of psychological subjectivity and that this theorizing is connected fundamentally with the history of shame"; focuses on selected works by…

Sisk contends that a number of late medieval works, including Fragment 8 of CT, "obliquely" address contemporary religious issues. These works mark a departure from more traditional (and clearly didactic) religious treatises and may even suggest that…

Analyzes the terms - "song," "dite," "tretyse," etc. - used for short poems in Middle English, including terms in Chaucer's works.

Investigates the ways CT problematizes the medium of speech and, through its self-conscious narrators, comments on the changing value of spoken language. Though Chaucer preserves and allows resistance to the tyrannies of high literary form, his…

Explores the type, use, and functions of formulas in Th, in relation to parody; in Mel, in dramatic form reinforcing allegory.

Arcite breaks his oath of brotherhood with Palamon, the promise he made to Theseus never to return to Athens, and the code of knighthood by doing menial labor disguised as a "povre laborer." The "ignoble, freakish manner of [his] death" thus suits…

Score for voice and orchestra in forty-two bars (fifteen minutes). The text that accompanies the score, compiled from twenty-six lines selected from KnT and Truth by Daphne Burgess, is given in Middle English; a modern "paraphrase" also included.