Browse Items (15971 total)

Focuses on CT and PardT, specifically. Discusses the Pardoner's fabrication of relics and the "preposterous" transformation of "accident into substance," a reversal of the trope used in PardT, the narrative voice in both GP and PardT, and deception…

Considers the Pardoner in PardT as an "exemplary figure" of what Walter Benjamin argues is a defining trait of modernity: the eclipse of religion's sacralizing capacities by capitalism, which, like the Pardoner’s sales pitch, intensifies guilt…

Focuses on two texts that feature violence against women to examine how the violated woman functions as a tool for political change. Both Chaucer and Gower foreground the suffering that men experience in response to the violated female body, leading…

Considers FranT as a Breton lay that recalls, not ancient history, but Chaucer's recent memories of his own stays in France, tying the tale to the marital situation of Joan of Kent.

Argues that FranT should be added to "the Chaucerian pandemic canon" for its depiction of pandemic trauma and recovery.

Highlights the utility of proverbs and offers them as a solution to the problem of knowledge in SqT. Emphasizes that proverbs provide new insights for late medieval textual cultures as a microgenre that transcends social and economic boundaries in…

Challenges the limitations of traditional source-and-analogue study, exploring resonances between SqT and the "Kitab al-Manazir" of Ibn al-Haytham /Alhacen to which it alludes (see SqT, 232–45), including discussion of mediating sources in Latin…

Compares and contrasts SqT and the analogous Middle Dutch "Roman van Walewein," focusing on their eastern settings, treatments of marvel, and other romance conventions. Considers Chaucer's possible knowledge of Middle Dutch and "Van Walewein,"…

Considers the role of spectacle in SqT, comparing the poetic strategies for inscribing spectacle to Richard Maidstone's approach in "Concordia."

Examines May of MerT as a version of the motif of the healing woman, familiar "across medieval literary genres from romance to hagiography." The fabliau setting of the tale, however, inverts a range of "courtly and religious hierarchies" as May…

Examines the frequent mention of Griselda's face in ClT, as compared to his sources, and simultaneously argues that Chaucer's version highlights Griselda's interiority and how she maintains her patience.

Combines personal appreciation and critical analysis of the Wife of Bath as a character; Chaucer’s art in creating her and WBPT; and the voluminous historical reception and impact of the Wife from early scribal glosses to international modern…

Studies "representations of women's desire and . . . its intersections with eroticism, pleasure, and power" in WBPT, Robert Henrysons' "Testament of Cresseid," "The Book of Margery Kempe," and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight."

Assesses the social and economic dynamics of CkT and the GP descriptions of the Cook and the guildsmen, arguing that the tale "indicts both the laterally mobile prodigal apprentice and the decadent hypocrisy" of his master "through the linked…

Examines "the North as a regional concept in the literature of medieval England," considering a range of texts from Bede's "Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum" to the Towneley plays. Chapter 4, "Chaucer's Northern Consciousness in the 'Reeve's…

Responds to two essays concerned with sexual consent in medieval literature, including Leah Schwebel, “Chaucer and the Fantasy of Retroactive Consent." SAC 44 (2022): 337–45. Suggests that we might read RvT "as an incel revenge fantasy."

Explores aspects of sexual consent and non-consent in RvT--particularly Malyne's romanticizing of Aleyn's assault--linking them with Augustine's comments on Lucretia in "De civitate Dei," modern notions of "retroactive consent," and the Chaucer life…

Focuses on RvT and argues that newly discovered documents allow scholars to move beyond Chaucer's individual blame and address structural issues and concerns with language describing and depicting sexual assault in late medieval texts.

Uses trauma theory to read KnT as a "meditation on catastrophe and survival."

Argues that 'Augustine's theology allows us to see providence in romance as a doubled perspective that recognizes the existential smallness of individuals and their collective participatory power in a plural world," addressing KnT, ClT, and…

Uses Homi Bhabha's concepts of borderline community and mimicry ("The Location of Culture" [1994]) to investigate the descriptions of the guildsmen in GP, 361-78, as they relate to shifts and tensions in Chaucer’s contemporary society, focusing on…

Facing-page translation of GP into modern English iambic decasyllables; features illustrations of the pilgrims--reproductions of Caxton’s woodcuts paired with original woodcut portraits--and an extensive glossary.

Presents a "new way to conjoin Chaucer's sophisticated engagement with philosophical thought and his obvious focus on amatory concerns" in CT, arguing that the narrative "authoritatively abandons authority"--a paradox that recalls logical…

“[A]pproaches the Canterbury Tales through the lens of humor theory, responding to a much-noted gap in existing scholarship by focusing primarily on the structures and mechanisms of humor in the text.”

Tabulates liturgical references within CT and argues that the poem depicts the secularization of liturgy and its appropriation for social control, while also presenting a carnivalesque celebration of the reversal of social hierarchy.