Browse Items (15542 total)

BD deals with a universal concern, response to the death of a loved person. In a Christian world the knight, mourning his lady, finds consolation by expressing her beauty and goodness in words; he returns to the present world with a suggestion of…

Lacanian psychoanalysis of how words used to describe the objects of desire in FranT do not accord with the work of desire actually performed.

Drawing from Geoffrey of Vinsauf and Mikhail Bakhtin on the "rhetoric of the utterance," Andreas stresses the importance of Chaucer's links between tales in the development of characters, authors, audience, and still more stories. The links exist in…

Language is used to reveal or conceal. Warping his own beliefs, Pandarus in his speech redefines or avoids moral issues; duplicitous Diomede thinks like Pandarus, speaks like Troilus; Troilus's speech is forthright, literal; Criseyde is capable of…

Although the Catholic Church in the twelfth century had developed "extraordinarily rigorous" prohibitions against intermarriage by persons related by blood, by the thirteenth century these standards had to be relaxed. Archibald discusses various…

Examines allusions to Chaucer's poetry in works by Thomas Wyatt. Thynne's edition of Chaucer shows how he was appropriated for the crown's political agenda, while the Devonshire manuscript reflects subversive appropriation. Wyatt capitalizes on…

Cole examines the "intricate relationship between sex, money, and power" in WBP, particularly as reflected in the sequence in which the Wife recalls her husbands.

By using the language of feudal economics Chaucer equates the summoner with the devil.

Argues that genre and the discourses of desire in MerT prove too strong for the narrator, who is constantly conflicted about his presentation not only of linguistic and narrative desires but also of the psychoanalytic displacements of these desires.

The pilgrims' decisions to address each other formally, as "you," or intimately, as "thou," reveal their attitudes about each other and their own social self-conceptions. Harry Bailly's central role, in terms both of the poem's structure and of…

Implicit in the proverb are two distinct views of the order of human development: the order is either a 'high norm to be achieved" or a "low norm to be transcended." Although Chaucer never directly cites the proverb, evidence found in KnT and PrT,…

Addresses word choice in Thomas Hoccleve's English translation of Henry Suso's "Ars moriendi," a Latin text. Chaucer's use of the word "similitude" shows that it had entered the English language; however, Hoccleve translates both imago" and…

Chaucer's PrT allows competing psychoanalytic readings from both feminine and masculine points of view, a conflict that mirrors the competition for predominance between male and female figures embedded within the text. These readings may be…

Several citations of Chaucer.

Argues that Chaucer's interest in Breton lays rests on the genre's association with magic and language. WBT has features of a Breton lay, but is not marked as such; FranT, even though it has its sources in the Italian novelle, is marked as a Breton…

Explores how Tudor editions of Chaucer and works by John Gower and John Lydgate "mediate" the presentation of Chaucer and his "authorial identity" in Edmund Spenser's "Shepheardes Calender," arguing that Spenser depicts Chaucer not only as the…

Assesses "why puns matter so much" in MilT, both "speaker puns" and "recipient puns," exploring the yoked concerns of language and intention, and commenting on secular and religious punning in medieval linguistic, artistic, rhetorical, and lexical…

Adduces KnT, 1362, as one example in suggesting a new sub-meaning for the MED definition of "dry"/"drye."

Explores parallels between several medieval analogues to Chaucer's use of the phrase "Latyn corrupt" in his description of Constance's language in MLT 2.519--the alliterative "Morte Arthure," the "Etymologiae" of Isidore of Seville (possibly, the…

literary heritage of Breton lay narratives, with emphasis on FranT. For three essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for A noble tale / Among us shall awake under Alternative Title

Explores verbal play with walls and words in Dante's allusion to Pyramus and Thisbe in his "Commedia"; Chaucer's uses of enclosure and openness in TC in light of his own allusion to the love pair (TC 5.1247-48); and Henryson's closing off of…

Suggests that the description of Blanche's throat as a round ivory tower may "carry on the idea" of the Duchess being referred to as a "fers," a chess piece, found elsewhere in the poem.

Explores the implications of the name "Malle" that is given to the widow's sheep in NPT 7.2831: the sheep is a ewe and suggests the widow's "simplicity, her poverty, and one of the ways in which" she is a dairy woman.

Aligns details of GP 1.361-78 with historical evidence to argue that the five tradesmen or "Burgesses" described by Chaucer belonged to a "craft fraternity [rather than a parish fraternity] and that the Drapers' Fraternity (or Brotherhood of St. Mary…

Explores the "ideological work" of children in Chaucer's literature, commenting on Sophie in Mel, Virginia in PhyT, Maurice in MLT, and Lewis in Astr. Treats the latter as a metonym for vernacular readers and for the potential of technological…