Browse Items (16035 total)

Fragment 1 of CT (KnT, MilT, and RvT) "posit[s] contra-factual histories" for Chaucer's source texts while employing imagery of "sodomy, rape and monstrous hybrids" as refutations of those histories' threats to the structure of a salvation comedy.

Biography of Katherine Swynford, emphasizing the love she shared with John of Gaunt. Includes color illustrations, notes, index, bibliography, and several appendices (including a genealogical table of the Chaucer family). Numerous brief references…

Reminiscences of working in the "University of Chicago Chaucer Laboratory, where Manly and Rickert were producing the 'Text'."

Challenges "the standard view that fifteenth-century poets wrote irregular meters in artless imitation of Chaucer," arguing instead that "Chaucer’s followers deliberately misread his meter in order to challenge his authority" and rather than…

Skelton's "Tunnyng of Elynour Rummynge" mixes "Chaucerian and Langlandian forms," capitalizing on their presentations of female sexuality and economic value. Skelton's Elynour is neither a personification (like Lady Mede) nor realistic (like the…

E-book facsimile of London, British Library, MS Sloane 1723, which includes CYT, 1428–81.

Using Winchester College MS 33 as a touchstone for examining the difficulties of apprehending medieval texts, Hanna attributes the miscellaneous nature of collections of vernacular works in manuscripts to the difficulties of textual supply rather…

Reads PF as a "poem of love and marriage, touching upon the question of pleasure versus the duty of procreation, realistically set in the framework of a dream, and seasoned with wit." Emphasizes the poem's balanced sensibility and "refreshing…

In the transformation from Deduit in the "Roman de la Rose" to the Host of CT, and in the actions of the Host during the pilgrimage, we can see intersections of gender and class as Chaucer constructs the Host's distinctively "bourgeois masculinity."

Ovid's Narcissus becomes polysemous, generating figures of language among "Pearl" (Dreamer as Narcissus); TC (narrator's drawing on the myth for rhetoric to link pagan and Christian); "Piers Plowman B" (Christian Narcissus and "dreamer-Will"); and…

Modern English translation of Gower's French original, with select bibliography and notes on "only the most necessary information."

Anti-Semitism is a commonplace in miracles of the Virgin, the special enmity between the Virgin and the Jews deriving from the apocryphal "Transitus." Some miracles end in conversion of the Jews; others in their destruction wholesale; PrT in…

Discusses Marian identification in PrT, in particular Marian miracles, as well as connections to the Virgin Mary in SNT, Th, and WBPT. Emphasizes development of Middle English Marian miracle texts, and Mary's "symbolic connection to Jews." Claims…

Discusses PrT and other versions of Marian miracles.

Compares the miracles in MLT with those in its source in Nicholas Trevet, arguing that by emphasizing emotion over religion Chaucer renders the narrative more powerful and humanistic.

Surveys patristic commentary and theory regarding miracles, and treats miracles associated with various shrines: Saint Faith, Saint Benedict, Saint Cuthbert, Saint WIlliam, Saint Godric, Saint Friedeswide, and Saint Thomas of Canterbury, as well as…

Emphasizes Chaucer's biographical connections to Kent to support the claim that a "visual source" for the narrative framework of CT exists in pictorial representations of the miracles of Thomas Becket on stained glass in Trinity Chapel at Canterbury…

Considers MLT and SqT in a study of female xenoglossia (the ability to use or comprehend foreign tongues) in the later Middle Ages.

Intersectional analysis of four character types in medieval romance. Includes discussion of the loathly lady, WBT, and its analogues, arguing that Chaucer's version offers a figure of power, ambiguous because we remain "unsure whether she will use…

Accepts that variants in manuscripts of TC provide evidence of Chaucer's revisions and studies a number of small changes that affect meter, style, and emphasis; cancellations or moving of stanzas have broader implications for Chaucer's…

Tormey examines metal and metalworking as symbols of economic forces shaping the development of epic form and subject matter. Discusses CT and Dante's "Inferno" as "proto-commercial travel narratives."

Summarizes the manuscript information pertinent to The Cook's Tale and The Squire's Tale, focusing on scribal confrontations with their fragmentary state, including continuations and, especially, gaps and notes. Evidence suggests that the notes and…

Considers the "non-lyric French inclusions" in Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.20 as evidence of what "French meant to [John] Shirley" and what this indicates about fifteenth-century English reception of French literature.

Seventeen essays by various authors on topics ranging from the Middle English St. Francis to the Passion plays, the York Cycle, John Wycliff, "Piers Plowman," Gower, Margery Kempe, and other medieval writers and their literature. For two essays that…

Identifies where "[a]cross his writings . . . Chaucer treats mind, body, and affect in sophisticated ways that go far beyond convention," focusing particularly on lovelorn knights in BD, KnT, and TC, and swooning women in ClT, MLT, and LGW. Argues…