Browse Items (16043 total)

An alphabetical one-volume encyclopedia of medieval "literary works, authors, historical figures, events, themes, and genres," with a general emphasis on "early British literature" and individual entries for Continental literatures. Many entries are…

An alphabetical dictionary of the "world fable," i.e., the beast fable and related narratives in various international traditions, both as stand-alone narratives and as exempla in larger works.

Surveys theatrical genre labels ("comedy," "tragedy," "play," "drama") in early English, including Chaucer's uses of them. Then surveys the ways in which Chaucer's plots, motifs, and emphases influenced Shakespeare, with comments also on the…

Explores the trope of England as an idealized garden/island in imagery of homes in various medieval and Renaissance works, including NPT.

Explores the vibrant language of CT (and the difficulties of translation), its relations with oral tradition, and the constraints and possibilities of traditional medieval narrative set in tension with a competitive tale-telling contest among diverse…

Chaucer's works reflect a pattern of concern with the realist-nominalist issues of language. Early on, Chaucer critiques realism, and, later on, nominalism, while TC and especially CT pose the two views in dialogic debate. Fragment 6 (Phyt and PardT)…

Vance's concept of "power semantics" articulates how Chaucer uses transgressive exempla--"meta-examples which confound expectations"--to pit the discourse of medieval history against itself in PardT, predicating a literal critique of medieval culture…

Explores how the character Theseus in KnT does and does not embody principles of political philosophy found in Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy." Combining "idealism and political exigency," Theseus fulfills the "composite model of an ideal"…

Explores the "joining of contradictions in irony" in the GP portrait of the Prioress and the "joining of contraries" in the "sublime paradox" in the allusion to the Incarnation in PrT. A further contradiction is "that the Prioress, whose faith and…

Studying four families of emotion words (wrath, anger, annoyance, grief) in the Chaucer canon, Diller draws several conclusions: the introduction of emotion words from French and their rivalry with native English words deserve close scrutiny;…

Investigates the restless "emotional movement" of "roaming" in KnT, as expression of both confined frustration and openness to new adventures enacted by Palamon, Emelye, and Arcite. Compares Chaucer's depictions of these movements and emotions with…

Focuses on words and phrases collocating with "herte," "minde," and "soule" in CT and TC and analyzes how Chaucer "exerts his influence on the reader's/audience's emotion" through the use of these words.

Considers the connection between ethics and emotional response in several Middle English texts, including TC.

Compares the functions and effects of Dorigen's "odd pleasure of intense feeling" in FranT with those of Marianne Dashwood in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, considering their feelings in light of their respective community structures and gender…

Explores emotion as a device of rhetoric from Antiquity through the fifteenth century, and describes the influence of Aristotle's "Rhetoric" on political, ethical, and literary discourse from the thirteenth century forward. Assesses a wide range of…

Of roughly 30,000 lines of Chaucer's iambic pentameter, only a tiny subset are variant. The majority of his lines follow a template of ten syllables, each foot beginning with a weak syllable. The essay refers specifically to FranT.

Argues that the depictions of Emelye and Diana in KnT result from the Knight's objectification, ventriloquism, and patriarchal ideals.

Item not seen; WorldCat information indicates this is a children's novel, set in the Middle Ages, about a gifted girl who flees her home in order to protect a Chaucer manuscript.

Studies the "role of stigma in determining the social value of a lone woman of loathly proportions or perceptions," discussing a range of texts, medieval to postmodern, including two chapters on WBPT that assess the loathly lady as the "alter ego" of…

As part of a larger discussion of "loathliness" and the transformation away from loathliness in the context of marginalization of women, examines WBPT. Particular attention is paid to "the implications of disembodying a Loathly Lady in a tale that…

Interprets the GP description of the Prioress as a satire of an institution rather than a critique of an individual, offering the reading as a prolegomenon to a comparative discussion of the challenges of teaching English and teaching foreign…

Assessment of Schlauch's career and criticism, focusing on her Chaucer's Constance and Accused Queens (1927; rpt. 1969). Includes a bibliography of Schlauch's publications.

Rowland reviews Chaucer biography, noting the reluctance of most SAC contributors to explore Chaucer's life and their interest in his "mentality." Recent biography leaves a number of unresolved problems, difficulties, and mysteries in Chaucer's…

Explores connotations of "elvyssh" in Pr-ThL as an aspect of "Chaucer's poetic self-representations" in CT and in HF, suggesting that they indicate characteristic reserve.

Reevaluation and continuation of the studies by John Burrow and by Richard Firth Green on the meaning of the word "elvish" in CT. "Elvish" in CYT carries the meaning "delusory," whereas elvish in the prologue to Th means "abstracted."