Browse Items (16012 total)

Explores the role of taboo on the semantic shift of the term 'bug' from an object of terror to an insect. Assesses the occurrence of the word in the Delaware manuscript at NPT 7.2936, where other manuscripts have devils.

Analyzes the name "Pertelote" in NPT as "beautiful paramour" and "little beauty," and "Colle," "Talbot," and "Gerland" as dog-names. Includes recurrent concern with levels of style in Chaucer's naming and on names that link aspects of CT, e.g.,…

Assesses how Brian Helgeland's "A Knight's Tale" and John Madden's "Shakespeare in Love" "tell us more than they realize": that Chaucer always stands separate from his fiction and, conversely, that Shakespeare's "theatrical life" enables us to…

Ten essays selected from the papers presented at the Third Medieval English Studies Symposium in Poznan, Poland, in November 2004, focusing on Old and Middle English language and literature. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Naked…

Item noit seen. The second of the two verse dramas included here, "De Raptu Meo," is an adaptation of a portion of O’Connor’s "Chaucer’s Triumph" (2007), depicting Chaucer as he is accused of raping Cecily Chaumpaigne.

In the light of medieval "artes poetriae," rhetoric is perceived as feminine. Chaucer's hagiography, courtly romance, and fabliaux demonstrate rhetoric in various modes: as chaste, "pedestal," and wanton, especially as voiced by the Clerk and the…

The appearance of naked "Geoff" Chaucer in Brian Helgeland's film, "A Knight's Tale," "challenges the logic of the present . . . assumed by presentism," even while reminding us that historical periods exist, "each one haunted by the moment of its…

This anthology of drama, poetry, fiction, and essays that pertain to Medea ranges from Euripides to the late twentieth century, including a facing-page selection (pp. 114-23) from the story of Hypsipyle and Medea in LGW, presented in Middle English…

Explores the skeptical uncertainly about dreams that is expressed in the opening of HF as it relates to classical and medieval notions of "mythopoesis" and the validity and interpretation of poetry. Reads HF as a parody of mythopoesis.

Considers Chaucer's rendition of Lucrece (in LGW) as part of a series of narratives that transform Lucrece's story into a text that "reveal[s] an evolving patriarchal ideology."

Wilcockson examines the eclectic allusiveness of inscriptions painted by David Jones, one of which echoes lines 1003-12 of Chaucer's Rom.

Mythological lovers alluded to in TC were associated in medieval letters with "amor stultus," foolish love. Allusions to Oenone, Tereus and Procne, Orpheus and Eurydice, and Myrrha help characterize the love of Troilus and Criseyde as foolish,…

Explores historicity and fictionality in medieval narratives of early. mythic Thebes. Includes brief commentary on the sources of Chaucer's knowledge of Oedipus and his conflation of Egyptian and Boeotian Thebes in KnT 1.1470ff.

A study of later medieval commentaries on classical myth in the Boethian work sheds light on such matters as Chaucer's treatment of the Muses and Lydgate's view of Hercules.

Includes a series of essays in medieval studies and book history that are concerned "with the tenuous connection between what we define as evidence and what we construct as the narrative, scholarly or historical, that makes sense of that evidence."…

Problems of tone--comic versus tragic--make the reader of MLT uneasy. There is also the problem of the weakness of the "literal narrative and the heavy-handed intrusions of the author." One can discern meaningful form, however, if one observes that…

Although scholars agree that Chaucer failed to provide a solution to the problems raised in PF, Piehler argues through a reading on scholastic principles that Chaucer solves them "in accordance with principles characteristic of his age and…

Assesses the Helen-Deiphebus sub-plot in TC for the ways that it reinforces the poem's theme of inconstancy and anticipates Criseyde's relationship with Diomedes.

Presenting Troy in TC as the mirror image of London in the 1380s, Chaucer engages conflicting notions of history and historiography. In particular, his depiction of the Trojan parliament is a warning to his contemporaries. Chaucer embraces…

Meecham-Jones contrasts LGWP with BD, showing how the former exhibits the poet's confidence in adapting sources. Discusses the depiction of Alceste as a parody of figures such as Boethius's Philosophy, Dante's Beatrice, and the Pearl-maiden -…

Explores "links between gender ideology and money in the late Middle Ages," arguing that Chaucer's "depiction of his purse as a faithless female lover" in Purse reflects the "cultural imaginary around money before the emergence of
political…

Combines memoir with literary criticism to explore the importance of poetry in the examined life. Begins with discussion of TC and Chaucer's use of "kankedort."

Autobiographical remembrance/contemplation by a gay medievalist in New York. Includes frequent references and allusions to medieval topics, including Chaucer, here described as "really the most important thing in the world."

Arguing for the prominence of the Biblical account of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac in medieval culture, the author observes the presence of children as sacrificial figures in MkT, PrT, PhyT, MLT, and ClT, and notes the rewards of faith in those…

Assesses Jacques Lacan's and Slovoj Žižek's discussions of courtly love, focusing on the hermaphroditic potential of the Courtly Lady, and discusses FranT for the ways that hermaphroditic and masochistic tendencies inhabit the main characters'…