Browse Items (16039 total)

Although many editors and critics of medieval literature assume a single authoritative text, literary authority may be diffuse. Crowley examines in detail the B and C versions of "Piers Plowman." Also treats the frame of Gower's "Confessio Amantis"…

Prescott introduces HF to the general reader as simple to read, yet full of Chaucer's mischievous fun. In HF, Chaucer reveals the way fame was viewed by his contemporaries, plus the way he thinks they and we should see it. He gives readers much to…

Explores ho inheritance was imagined between the lifetimes of Chaucer and Shakespeare. Examines medieval writings, including CT and TC, and Renaissance writings, such as Edmund Spenser's "Faerie Queene" and William Shakespeare's "As You Like It,"…

Thirteen essays by various authors consider new and traditional conceptualizations of medieval English language and literature. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Imagining Medieval English under Alternative Title

Investigates magical objects in late-medieval English literature that express relations between secrecy and identity (both political and individual), exemplifying various authors' attitudes, and maintaining that in HF Chaucer poses questions rather…

Focuses on the poetic form made famous by "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and Th, but also considers poetic form in the scorpion passage of BD and alliteration in ParsP. Discusses myths surrounding the "bob and wheel" form that are often…

Within the context of an examination of the English Renaissance, submits that the 1598 edition of Chaucer connects manuscripts and print culture, while lending Chaucerian authority and canonicity to print editions.

Contemplates the category of "the literary" in medieval English texts, surveying prior attempts to define or describe the category and indicating their utility. Comments on a range of Chaucerian topics, including the "cunningly self-authorizing…

Discusses the intersection of death, money, and elements of the Catholic mass in PardT. In the wake of the plague, the mass became closely associated with death because of the spreading practice of saying masses for the souls of the dead. The…

Considers writers such as Chaucer, Robert Mannyng, John Mirk, and, most extensively, William Langland in examining the medieval understanding of the parish and its associated individuals and phenomena. As a traditional center of religious practice,…

Thinks about Thopas "in the context of medieval maps," and considers the Tale's pointers and misdirections in plot and genre, assessing them in light of the traditional Chaucer-Pilgrim / Chaucer-Poet distinction. Designed for pedagogical use,…

CkT presents merriment at ribaldry, as well as social anxiety over the monetary waste of degenerate apprentices.

Review article evaluating Chaucerian videotapes distributed by Films for the Humanities and tape cassettes of the Chaucer Studio produced subsequent to Betsy Bowden's guide to recorded Middle English (Garland, 1988). Ford Madox Brown's painting…

Discusses temporality and "cultural imaginings" of time in Lydgate, Hoccleve, and Chaucer. Refers to Chaucer's use of narrative and seasonal time and memory in CT, BD, PF, HF, and Astr.

Sensitive to contemporary political events, Shakespeare parodies Spenser's Tears of the Muses in A Midsummer Night's Dream. In addition, the dream of the elf queen in Chaucer's Th is the source of Bottom's dream, as well as Arthur's dream in Faerie…

Investigates how the practices of fifteenth-century scribes of manuscripts of English poetry and prose--particularly CT manuscripts, and works by Lydgate and Hoccleve--reveal "traces of immaterial traditions, intentions, assumptions, activities and…

Considers how the three titular authors equate excessive emotional response and similar qualities to texts with immaturity. Reads ClPT as Chaucer's reaction to Petrarch on the vernacular.

Describes "the concept of immersion as seen from cognitive narratology" and the "concept of defamiliarization as seen from unnatural narratology,” applying these theoretical constructs to BD, Jorge Luis Borges's "The Circular Ruin," and Franz…

Argues that fourteenth-and fifteenth-century dream visions "challenged routine modes of thinking about and being in the world." Chapter 4 includes discussion of stained glass in HF and John Lydgate's "Temple of Glass."

Discusses thematic and structural implications of parody and analogy in various Chaucerian works and other medival literature.

Chaucer leaves both suffering and heroism "open to ambiguous interpretation" in KnT, prompting readers to go beyond disorder and hopelessness and discover Boethian consolation, which is anchored in recognition of the true good.

Jimura cites instances of impersonal constructions in TC and KnT in which verbs of "occurrence or happening" (e.g., "befal," "hap") are used to present important events and to suggest inevitability.

Traces the development of the impersonal to the personal construction on the basis of evidence found in Chaucer.

Considers the medieval interest in Boethius as a personal model as well as a literary influence, with particular regard to Usk's deployment of Boethius in an effort at self-justification and Hoccleve's connections between Boethius and Chaucer.

Transcribes (with modern punctuation, capitalization, and commentary) a 26-line compilation of proverbial misogynistic sentiment from London, British Library MS Harley 7333, fol. 121v-122r, attributed there to "Impingham," identified by Manly and…