Browse Items (15971 total)

Examines geographical and literary backgrounds to Chaucer's use of "Carrenare" in BD, 1029, identifying it with "Caramoran" (especially as found in Marco Polo and Mandeville), and suggesting it helps to separate Blanche from the vanities of the…

Examines auditory cognition in BD, PF, and HF, attending particularly to “janglynge” and related concepts. BD illustrates differences between hearing and listening, while PF records a "paradigm shift" from seeing to listening, and HF reflects…

Highlights that BD conveys the inevitability and incomprehensibility of death, offering a reading of the poem that moves beyond consolation of poetry and memory.

Includes discussion of the reference to Boetes (the constellation Boötes) in Bo, IV, met. 5, explaining the astronomy underlying the "puzzle" found in Boethius's original reference and in Chaucer's translation.

Claims that although the prologue to Astr is addressed to Chaucer's son "little Lewis," it is structurally and rhetorically complex, appealing to sophisticated Latinists as well as to young English speakers. Argues that the prologue imitates Latin…

Explains the practical utilities and operations of astrolabes, reporting on several years' use of a homemade instrument. Includes recurrent references to Astr as a helpful guide, describing it as "apparently the earliest known technical manual…

Examines Astr as a work on literature that uses the astrolabe to overcome geographical separation between father and son. A narrative of family reunion then writes the son out of the text, while apophasis keeps the son at its center. Also notes how…

Argues that the language of Ret should not be understood as a modern retraction would be; expresses skepticism that Ret is actually meant to retract works like CT.

Considers locations in Chaucer's corpus where he might have depicted divine speech, before highlighting how Jesus' words serve as "auctoritas" in ParsT. Comparing this method to the absence of depictions of divine speech in Chaucer's other works,…

Contrasts the master-pupil relationships in CYT and Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" and their concepts of philosophy. Argues that CYT ridicules the false nature of philosophy. In Japanese, with English abstract.

Explores aspects of "power differential and toxicity" in the mentor-mentee relationship of the Canon and the Canon's Yeoman, reading CYPT as the emancipatory complaint of the latter. For a response, see Response to Micah James Goodrich and Alice…

Comments on issues of complaint and consent in two essays included in this volume of SAC, linking the medieval past with the present. Includes response to Micah James Goodrich, “The Yeoman's Canon: On Toxic Mentors."

Anatomizes the theme and structures of failure in CYPT, contrasting the Canon's Yeoman and Chaucer-pilgrim as narrators, and tallying ways that failure dominates the narrative: failed science, failed rhetoric, failed comedy, failed moralizing, and…

Surveys medieval and early modern study of alchemy and writing about alchemy, with particular attention to its obscurities of language and limited potential for progress. A section called "Playing with Obscurity: Chaucer's Manipulation of the 'Tabula…

Chapter 2 focuses on free volition (as formulated by John Duns Scotus), empathy, and fraternal bonding in "Amis and Amiloun" and in SNT. In the latter, Valerian and Tiburce “forgo political loyalties and prioritize their fraternal bond by cultivating…

"[A]nalyzes scenes of 'undisciplined reading' in late medieval texts: that is, scenes in which characters read without formal training and with the 'wrong' emotions." Includes discussion of NPPT as a "bungled interpretation of Marie de France's…

Considers the end of NPT and the Bible verse Romans 15:4. Claims the verse is used to bridge the two opposing views of Chaucer's intent in his writing, attempting to unite the morally serious poet with the subversive poet.

Classifies the nouns in NPT using the categories presented by an English lexicon. Considers the proportion of Latin-based nouns and Old English-based nouns in each category. In Japanese.

Collects 100 poems and excerpts from poems on views of outer space, including NPT, 3187–99. In Middle English with no indication of edition.

Examines music as a coequal to rhetoric and a branch of medieval philosophy to argue that Chaucer's beast fable traces and complicates three major tenets of Boethian and medieval music theory.

Traces the tension between reading ecocritically and figuratively, highlighting moments of grafting in MkT and Rom, and reads these moments of horticulture more literally.

Considers the vexed critical history of MkT as a possibility for engaging classroom discussion about issues of theme, aesthetics, political perspective, and critical predilection. Focuses on various approaches to the tale before and after the heyday…

Focuses on the medical effects of the herbs mentioned in Th to argue that the narrator's impetuosity demonstrates the effects of herbs he mentions in lines 760-65.

Reconsiders questions of the composition and occasion of PrT (here titled "Clergeon") before Chaucer incorporated it into the CT, arguing on biographical, stylistic, and liturgical grounds that Chaucer may have originally composed the poem as early…

Considers the young child who watches the wife and monk in ShT, arguing that Chaucer's construction of narrative perspective, which the child embodies, anticipates more modern handling of narrative perspective, including that of Henry James.