Browse Items (16012 total)

Assesses examples from GP, KnT, MilPT, WBPT, and SNPT, deducing that medieval metaphors of emotion are similar to modern ones, although they depend more closely upon social categories, with negative metaphors typical of middle-class speakers, and…

Includes a section entitled "Shorter Chaucer Tales" (pp. 21–51) with five pieces inspired by CT: "The Host Tale," "The Summer Tale (Deus Hic, 1)," "The Franker Tale (Deus Hic, 2)," "The Not Tale (Funeral)," and "Fried Tale (London Zoo)." The…

By framing his "Pentacostal parody" within a parody of fourteenth-century English academics' preoccupation with measuring "both physical and metaphysical realities," Chaucer registers "a cautious but not gloomy attitude" regarding the spectrum of…

Looks at classical and early patristic views of the dance in "in bono" and "in malo" both as actual practice and as symbolism.

Tallies various possible verbal plays on "Malyne" in RvT, including the "implication that her lineage or line is tainted."

Examinies civil and criminal documentary evidence of the meanings of the term "rape," reconsidering their applicability to Cecily Champain's 1380 claim against Chaucer. The "inherent ambiguity" of the term and its "very wide range" of legal and…

Traces the definition and history of "knarre' in GP, cataloguing evidence for both a Dutch and Old Norse etymology. Offers some considerations for the role of the lexicographer and historian in general by addressing the particular history and meaning…

Explores why the Parson is neither a rector nor a parish priest, examining historical contexts and speculating about Chaucer's intentions, especially as they relate to backgrounds to the "Summa de poenitentia."

Reads WBT psychoanalytically, exploring its "sexual taboos," its phallic and vaginal significations, and the sexual fantasy that is "at the heart of the story." The tension between authority and submission in the Tale conveys meaning equally well for…

The unresolved ending of TC capitalizes on concern with means and ends throughout the poem, encouraging readers to resist the illusion of closure in any act of interpretation.

Adduces two instances in Middle English of the use of "point" with musical connotations, and suggests that the use of the term in TC 3.695 gains complexity from such connotations.

Shows that MED's definition of "mevyng" is correct, and that the word is not a scribal error for "menyng" but exists in its own right.

Suggests that "maying" shapes participants' sexuality, thereby furthering the "ritual's enactment of social status." Uses LGW as an example of the mirroring of human qualities in the natural world.

Explores how the "unfulfilled outcomes" of characters who are possibly mothers or possibly pregnant in TC, MerT, Shakespeare's "All's Well that Ends Well," and John Webster's "The Duchess of Malfi" “simultaneously enable author, character, and…

Not acknowledged or accounted for, feminine desire is a powerful force in the plot of MerT. Because January ignores May's sexual desires, he involuntarily provokes her to pursue a more appropriate mate. May takes what January proffers--his money…

Discusses how readers of MerT are encouraged to view all texts in mercantile terms and how texts (medieval texts in particular) are formed in the interactions among reader, author, and language. Both a product (a text to be consumed) and a producer…

Comments on the concern with propagating robust and pure lineages in numerous areas of medieval culture--including Chaucer's ClT, KnT, and MerT in particular. The denouement of the latter may be read as May's inserting herself into January's family…

Reason's speeches in the "Roman de la Rose" connect lust and avarice with merchants and thus provide a gloss for MerT. Amant, January, and the Merchant are similar moral types; the Merchant and January are dramatically related in that both marry…

Argues that Perez Galdos's "El amigo Manso" (1882) echoes TC in its concern with philosophical consolation, the theme of kinds of knowledge, and the narrator protagonist's mocking of his mourners in the afterlife. Like Troilus, Manso is an idealistic…

Examines "ironic references" to frame tales in Guy de Maupassant's story, "Boule de Suif," tallying similarities and differences between these references and Boccaccio's "Decameron," Chaucer's CT, and Marguerite de Navarre's "Heptaméron." Also…

Argues that Aristotelian theories of matter, form, and substance interact with medieval poetics, particularly in such works as ManT, SqT, "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," and those of Hoccleve and Metham.

Focuses on the oriental influences on Chaucer's SqT and on his treatment of the marvelous in light of the medieval controversial approach to mechanisms.

An important immediate source of Chaucer's work is in the Latin "Lamentations of Matheolus," a thirteenth-century French cleric, whose work Jean le Fevre translated into French and expanded in the fourteenth century. In excess of one hundred…

Da Rold's study of Cambridge University Library MS Dd.4.24 (a manuscript of CT) suggests that variations in shades of ink helps to disclose scribal habits of copying and emendation as well as the continuity of the exemplars used. Argues for further…

Explores the "cultural connotation of physical matter" expressed in gendered hylomorphic metaphors (matter/form) in the Medea accounts of LGW and John Lydgate's "Troy Book," arguing that Chaucer's representation raises questions about "the human as a…